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De Caus is important because when Descartes wrote about machines it is particularly his machines that he had in mind, and it is de Caus who transmits the new terminology from Latin into French, and through Descartes into English.

Descartes does not think of the universe as being like a clock because in his view outer space is filled not with the crystal spheres of Ptolemaic astronomy, nor with the gears and levers of de Caus’s machines, but with liquid vortices which carry the planets in their orbits around the stars.

One of de Caus’s machines, however, has a sophisticated feedback mechanism.

It was engineers such as de Caus who, by generalizing the concept of a moving mechanism, made the clockwork universe and the mechanical man possible.

De Caus in 1615 played with a very simple steam engine, and working steam engines require simple feedback mechanisms.