It is also an essential element of Charles Darwin's treatment of natural selection in his Origin of Species.
[4] The principle expresses the idea that natural things and properties change gradually, rather than suddenly.
Modern day quantum mechanics is sometimes seen as violating the principle, with its idea of discrete transitions between energy states.
[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.