  Gassendi's notion of non-relative space stands in direct contrast to the Cartesian plenist account, which suggests that space just is place, as defined by the extension of the resident (and universal) matter. This contrast bears a clear result relative to matter theory: Descartes is locked into a view of matter as infinitely divisible, in order to account for the absence of void or, what amounts to the same thing, the omnipresence of matter. Gassendi, on the other hand, is free to pose the existence of atoms and the void, where matter is located in space but is neither defined by nor definitive of that space.