 Despite the mechanistic, non-teleological character of Descartes’ analysis of motion and bodily interactions, there are many seemingly metaphysical and qualitative traits in Cartesian physics that do not sit comfortably with his brand of reductionism (i.e., that material bodies are simply extension and its modes). In fact, returning to the Cartesian laws of nature (section 4), it is evident that Descartes has allotted a fundamental role to the action of bodily “forces” or “tendencies”: for example, the tendency of bodies to follow straight lines, the resistance to motion of a large resting body (to a smaller moving body), etc. In The World, he states: “the virtue or power in a body to move itself can well pass wholly or partially to another body and thus no longer be in the first; but it cannot no longer exist in the world” (AT XI 15). As an early remark concerning his conservation principle, this explanation seems to envision force much like a property or “power” possessed by individual material objects, similar to the qualitative, metaphysical properties of the Scholastics (as in the “impetus” theory). For these reasons, the nature of bodily forces or tendencies is a philosophical question of much interest in the study of Descartes’ physics.