Talk:Natura non facit saltus

Initial notes

I've created this article, mostly as a stop-gap measure to prevent an ugly redlink in vestigial structure. As far as I can tell, none of the obvious articles dealing with this area existed prior to that, but I might have missed one.

My list of candidates would be:

• continuous variation - currently redirects here
• discontinuous variation - currently redirects here
• continuous vs discrete
• principle of continuous variation - I believe this is a synonym
• discretization - specialised mathematical article

Feel free to choose any title as a main title for the article and make this a redirect, or a short stub pointing to the new article; I'm just fighting the redlinks.

RandomP 14:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Are there quantum jumps?

The article "Are There Quantum Jumps?" by Schrodinger directly addresses the idea of such jumps in quantum systems, and might be a useful reference for this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.153.246.142 (talk) 17:04, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Reference to Aristotle

The link that is cited in the reference to Aristotle is dead. Since it is of marginal importance to the rest of the examples, I am removing the reference altogether. Gkaf (talk) 14:43, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Primary source needed

Britton et al. 2008, p. 289 (Britton, Andrew; Sedgwick, Peter H.; Bock, Burghard (2008). Ökonomische Theorie und christlicher Glaube. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 289) is inappropriate for supporting the claim that Leibniz used the phrase Natura non saltum facit, since it does not give a citation to a primary source. I do not doubt that Leibniz may have indeed written such a phrase, but if he did so where is the primary source? Leibniz is a famous scholar and we should be able to find a reliable source (preferably by a Leibniz scholar, not an economic historian) that provides a citation to a work actually written by Leibniz to support the claim that he used this Latin phrase. The standard Latin translation of the French phrase "la nature ne fait jamais des sauts" (Gottfried Leibniz, New Essays, IV, 16) is Natura non facit saltus as documented by the SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Continuity and Infinitesimals"). --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:15, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

The Britton et al. source just says that Leibniz wrote that in 1701-4, publ. 1765. That book is the New Essays written in French, not Latin! --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:22, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

The problem is, that Natura non facit saltus is grammatically incorrect. No scholar would ever write that. We have a direct object of a transitive verb, so this gets an accusative.

In my opinion the footnote in this text provides a perfect source for an alternative wording in the section Variant forms. After all, Wikipedia needs wp:secondary sources. Whether that book, or the book referred to is written in French, Latin or Chinese, is of no importance when it says something about a Latin phrase. Here you can find a significant list of Scholar sources, supporting the accusative (see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saltus#Latin) variant:

• Google Scholar "Natura non saltum facit",
• Google Scholar "Natura non facit saltum"
• Google Books "Natura non saltum facit"
• Google Books "Natura non facit saltum"

I have left the lead as you wrote it, because is gives a source (albeit a wp:tertiary source) for the article title, but I have restored the entry in the section Variant forms, with a slight amendment. - DVdm (talk) 08:29, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Are you familiar with Latin? saltūs is a perfectly formed fourth-declension accusative plural masculine noun (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saltus#Etymology_2); this is common knowledge. The phrase is both grammatical and well attested in the relevant literature: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/continuity/. Also, you cannot just use any secondary/tertiary source; you must use one written by a Leibniz scholar. The footnote you refer to says something that is easily falsified; it states that Leibniz wrote something in Latin in a certain book, but that certain book (Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain) was actually written in French! This mistake diminishes the reliability of this source as a piece of Leibniz scholarship (no surprise here, since it is not written by Leibniz scholars, but by economists and economic historians). You can say that there exists such a variant as Natura non saltum facit, but you cannot claim that Leibniz said it unless you can provide either a primary source or/and a reliable secondary source. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who restores material as per WP:BURDEN and MOS:QUOTE. All you need to do is to provide a specific secondary source written by a Leibniz scholar that explicitly says that Leibniz used the Latin phrase Natura non saltum facit even once in any of his writings. --Omnipaedista (talk) 14:53, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

The editors of Alexander Baumgarten, Metaphysics: A Critical Translation with Kant's Elucidations, Translated and Edited by Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers, "Preface of the Third Edition (1750)", p. 79 n. d [1] say that "[Baumgarten] must also have in mind Leibniz's "natura non facit saltus [nature does not make leaps]" (NE IV, 16)". This apparently means that there are two ways to translate Leibniz's French phrase. We can record both of them in the article. --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:31, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Please see my latest edits: [2] and [3]. I think that our latest edits conform to Wikipedia policies. Thanks for helping sort this out. --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:59, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Facepalm, my bad! Yes, I completely and utterly agree with your last edits, as quite indeed the noun saltus belongs to the 4th declension, as opposed to the participle, which belongs to the 2nd. My Latin appears to have become a bit rusty, and I should have looked closer. Thanks for your patience - DVdm (talk) 17:40, 22 May 2016 (UTC)