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Full Idea
Notoriously, the Cartesian idea that matter is purely geometrical will not do, for it leaves no distinction between matter and empty volumes: a filler for these volumes is required.
Gist of Idea
Matter can't just be Descartes's geometry, because a filler of the spaces is needed
Source
comment on René Descartes (works [1643]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.3
Book Ref
Robinson,Howard: 'Perception' [Routledge 2001], p.219
A Reaction
Descartes thinks of matter as 'extension'. Descartes's error seems so obvious that it is a puzzle why he made it. He may have confused epistemology and ontology - all we can know of matter is its extension in space.
| 16687 | Bodies are three-dimensional substances [Aquinas] |
| 16684 | Impenetrability only belongs to the essence of extension [Descartes] |
| 16601 | Matter is not hard, heavy or coloured, but merely extended in space [Descartes] |
| 6518 | Matter can't just be Descartes's geometry, because a filler of the spaces is needed [Robinson,H on Descartes] |
| 13185 | Even if extension is impenetrable, this still offers no explanation for motion and its laws [Leibniz] |
| 16683 | Leibniz eventually said resistance, rather than extension, was the essence of body [Leibniz, by Pasnau] |
| 5615 | Extension and impenetrability together make the concept of matter [Kant] |
| 6519 | Locke's solidity is not matter, because that is impenetrability and hardness combined [Robinson,H] |