The Creation of the Universe
by Rene Descartes
God put inequality and confusion among the parts of the aether at the beginning.
The parts were then reduced to:
- one size, and
- one middling motion.
It thus took the form of the aethereal air.
Before it was moved by God, the hardest and most solid body in the world*.
*Superphysics Note: As a triangle
The force of moving or dividing, which had first been placed in some of the parts of the aether, spread out in an instant, as equally as it could.
This equality could not be totally perfect because:
- There is no void at all in the aethereal world.
This makes it impossible for all of the aether to move in a straight line.
Instead, they all went into some circular motions since all of them were just about equal and as easily divertible.
God first moved them diversely. This made them turn in many different centers instead of a single one.
Consequently, they were naturally less agitated or smaller, or both, toward the centers than toward those farthest away.
All of them tended to continue their motion in a straight line.
The strongest of them were:
- the largest among those equally agitated and
- the most agitated among those equally large.
These had to describe the greatest circles, i.e. the circles most approaching a straight line.
The aether contained in between three or more of these circles were at first much less divided and less agitated than all the other.
At the beginning, God placed every sort of inequality among the parts of this matter.
This led to all sorts of sizes, shapes, and dispositions to move or not to move, in all ways and in all directions.
But that does not prevent them afterwards from having been rendered almost all fairly equal, especially those that remained an equal distance from the centers around which they were turning.
Some could not move without the others’ moving. The more agitated thus had to communicate some of their motion to those that were less agitated.
The larger had to break and divide in order to be able to pass through the same places as those that preceded them, or in order to rise higher.
Thus, in a short time, all the parts were arranged in order.
Each became more or less distant from the center around which it had taken its course, according as it was more or less large and agitated compared to the others.
Size always resists the speed of motion.
The aether more distant from each center were the ones more agitated because they were smaller than the ones near the center.[41]
Exactly the same holds for their shapes.
In the beginning, they had all sorts of shapes. They had many angles and sides, like the pieces that fly off from a stone when it is broken.
Afterwards, in moving and hurtling themselves against one another, they gradually had to break the small points of their angles and dull the square edges of their sides.
This continued until they had almost all been rendered round, just as grains of sand and pebbles do when they roll with the water of a river.
Thus, there is no more difference among those parts that are close and those that are far, except:
- that they can move a bit more quickly one than another
- that they are a bit larger or a bit smaller, and
- that they do not prevent one’s attributing the same form to all of them.
Some from the beginning were much larger than the others. These could not be so easily divided.
Some had very irregular and impeding shapes. These joined together severally rather than breaking up and rounding off.
Thus, they have retained the form of the aethereal earth which composed the planets and the comets.
