Descartes’ many hypotheses concerning space and body are best appreciated when viewed as a continuation of a long debate within Medieval/Renaissance philosophy centered upon the Aristotelian dictum that whatever possessed dimensionality was body (see, Grant 1981). While some philosophers, such as Telesio, Campanella, and Bruno, held space to be always filled with matter (i.e., a plenum) yet somehow independent of matter, others, like Patrizi and Gassendi, endorsed a more absolutist notion that a