 Descartes and his supporters were followers of mechanical philosophy, a form of natural philosophy popular in the 17th century which maintained that nature and natural beings act similar to machines.In his book "The World", Descartes suggests that the creation of the solar system and the circular motion of the planets around the Sun can be explained with the phenomena of "swirling vortices".Descartes also claimed that the world is made out of tiny "corpuscles" of matter, and that no vacuum could exist.