Pierre Gassendi, who
was a Catholic priest and a close contemporary of Descartes,
revived the work of Democritus and proposed an atomic theory in
which matter was composed of tiny indivisible parts. Unlike
Descartes, Gassendi did not attempt to describe a mechanistic
universe in which all action on a fundamental level occurred by way
of vortices - a theory which for many people marginalised God.
Instead, he envisaged a universe composed of Democritus's atoms
presided over by an all- pervading Creator. Gassendi's outlook has
been dubbed 'Christianised atomism', because it maintains an
omnipotent and omnipresent role for God. This was more acceptable
than Descartes's model to men like Newton, who sought a mechanistic
model for the universe but could not countenance any diminishing of
the Creator's position.
