The World (book)

The World, also called Treatise on the Light (French title: Traité du monde et de la lumière), is a book by René Descartes (1596–1650).

The World presents a corpuscularian cosmology in which swirling vortices explain, among other phenomena, the creation of the Solar System and the circular motion of planets around the Sun.

The World rests on the heliocentric view, first explicated in Western Europe by Copernicus.

Descartes delayed the book's release upon news of the Roman Inquisition's conviction of Galileo for "suspicion of heresy" and sentencing to house arrest.

Descartes discussed his work on the book, and his decision not to release it, in letters with another philosopher, Marin Mersenne.

To explain this, Descartes used the analogy of a river that carried both floating debris (leaves, feathers, etc.)

As to the reason why heavy objects on Earth fall, Descartes explained this through the agitation of the particles in the atmosphere.