One such principle to which Descartes appeals in his “proof” of the conservation of motion is “the immutability of the workings of God.” From this, he argues, it follows that “the motion which [God] preserves is not something permanently fixed in given pieces of matter, but something which is mutually transferred when collisions occur.” It is the finite motion that God imparts to the material world which gets conserved in physical interactions. Inversely, then, “the very fact that creation is in a continual state of change is…evidence of the immutability of God.”
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