“Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements.”
This striking (and perhaps cryptic) passage contrasting the continuous and the discrete starts off the 11th book of the epochal novel War and Peace by Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828–1920). Tolstoy’s tale concerns the tribulations of a group of Russian aristocrats during the turbulent period of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia.