The principle expresses the idea that natural things and properties change gradually, rather than suddenly. In a mathematical context, this allows one to assume that the solutions of the governing equations are
continuous, and also does not preclude their being
differentiable (differentiability implies continuity). Modern day
quantum mechanics is sometimes seen as violating the principle, with its idea of
discrete transitions between energy states.[5]Erwin Schrödinger in his objections to quantum jumps supported the principle, and initially developed his
wave mechanics in order to remove these jumps.
In the biological context, the principle was used by
Charles Darwin and others to defend the evolutionary postulate that all species develop from earlier species through gradual and minute changes rather than through the sudden emergence of new forms. In botany in particular, the
Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu was a major proponent of this view as well.[6] Modern
evolutionary biology has terminology suggesting both continuous change, such as
genetic drift, and discontinuous variation, such as
mutation. However, as the basic structure of
DNA is discrete, nature is now widely understood to make jumps at the biological level, if only on a very small scale.
Variant forms
The principle is also variously referred to as:
Natura in operationibus suis non facit saltum (transl.: "Nature in its operations doesn't make a (any) jump") — 1613 appearance of a similar expression.[7]
Natura non faciat saltus, nec ab extremo ad extremum transeat nisi per medium (transl.: "Nature may not make jumps, nor may it pass from extreme to extreme except by way of a mean.") — John Ray (1682).[8]
Natura non saltum facit (literally, "Nature does not make a jump") is a variant form, sometimes attributed to Gottfried Leibniz.[9]Natura non facit saltum is also the
epigraph of
Alfred Marshall's 1890 Principles of Economics. He most likely borrowed the phrase from Darwin's The Origin of Species.[10] An admirer of
Herbert Spencer, Marshall intended the epigraph both to proclaim his adherence to evolutionary thought and to justify his use of
differential calculus as an analytical tool—a use seen in all the seminal thinkers of
neoclassical economics. The spelling variation (saltus vs. saltum) displays a mere numeral difference; because the Latin noun saltus, meaning "leap", belongs to the
4th declension; so its singular accusative is saltum (leap), while the plural is saltus (leaps).
Die Natur macht keine Sprünge —
German translation of the phrase.[7]
^
abAlexander Baumgarten, Metaphysics: A Critical Translation with Kant's Elucidations, Translated and Edited by Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers, Bloomsbury, 2013, "Preface of the Third Edition (1750)",
p. 79 n. d: "[Baumgarten] must also have in mind Leibniz's "natura non facit saltus [nature does not make leaps]" (
NE IV, 16)." Also see Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain, 1704, p. 50
[1]
^Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859, p. 194; see p. 173 in the 1860 US edition, at this link
[2]
^Carolus Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica, 1st ed., 1751, Chapter III, § 77, p. 27.
^Stevens, Peter F. (1994). The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 7.
ISBN0-231-06440-3.