"The first naive impression of nature and matter is that of continuity. Be it a piece of metal or a fluid volume, we cannot escape the conviction that it is divisible into infinity, and that any of its parts, however small, will have the properties of the whole. But wherever the method of investigation into the physics of matter has been carried sufficiently far, we have invariably struck a limit of divisibility, and this was not due to a lack of experimental refinement but resided in the very nature of the phenomenon. One can indeed regard this emancipation from the infinite as a tendency of modern science and substitute for the old adage natura non facit saltus its opposite: Nature does make jumps."