The Cartesian universe is mainly matter, is endless, and the whole universe is literally in flux, in a kind of fluid. Within it are infinite worlds revolving around their suns, each world and sun spining, and within them infinite vortices of matter, one within the other, to the infinitesimally small. Emerson wrote that Descartes "had filled Europe with the leading thought of vortical motion as the secret of nature." Newton, in old age, complained bitterly that despite his proof that gravity moves the worlds, people still believed Descartes simply because Descartes had said it.

Or perhaps because the Cartesian vortices were more beautiful, were the stuff of dreams in ways that Newtonian gravity was not. Blake had written: "What was once imagined is now proved." Equally,what was once proved could now be imagined. Against Descartes' Cogito, Pound's letterhead read: "J'AYME DONC JE SUIS, I love therefore I am."

from "The Vortex," in Eliot Weinberger's newest book An Elemental Thing