Cordemoy Géraud de (1626–84), French philosopher and member of the Cartesian school. His most important work is his Le discernement du corps et de l’âme en six discours, published in 1666 and reprinted (under slightly different titles) a number of times thereafter. Also important are the Discours physique de la parole (1668), a Cartesian theory of language and communication; and Une lettre écrite à un sçavant religieux (1668), a defense of Descartes’s orthodoxy on certain questions in natural philosophy. Cordemoy also wrote a history of France, left incomplete at his death. Like Descartes, Cordemoy advocated a mechanistic physics explaining physical phenomena in terms of size, shape, and local motion, and held that minds are incorporeal thinking substances. Like most Cartesians, Cordemoy also advocated a version of occasionalism. But unlike other Cartesians, he argued for atomism and admitted the void. These innovations were not welcomed by other members of the Cartesian school. But Cordemoy is often cited by later thinkers, such as Leibniz, as an important seventeenth-century advocate of atomism. See also OCCASIONALIS. D.Garb.