Clinamen (/klaɪˈneɪmən/; plural clinamina, derived from clīnāre, to incline) is the Latin name Lucretius gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in order to defend the atomistic doctrine of Epicurus.
But if they were not in the habit of swerving, they would all fall straight down through the depths of the void, like drops of rain, and no collision would occur, nor would any blow be produced among the atoms.
The OED gives its first recorded use in English by Jonathan Swift in his 1704 Tale of a Tub ix.166, satirizing the atomistic theory of Epicurus: Epicurus modestly hoped that one time or other, a certain fortuitous concourse of all men's opinions—after perpetual justlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the square—would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things.
[5] In addition, other French writers such as Simone de Beauvoir,[6] Jacques Lacan,[7] Jacques Derrida,[8] Jean-Luc Nancy,[9] Alain Badiou,[10] Louis Althusser,[11] and Michel Serres[12] have made extensive use of the word 'clinamen' in their writings, albeit with very different meanings.
Lucretius' concept is central to the book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, written by Stephen Greenblatt.