Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
determination of causality adds the conception of necessity, which is
itself, however, subject to a rule of the understanding. The principle
of continuity forbids any leap in the series of phenomena regarded as
changes (in mundo non datur saltus); and likewise, in the complex of
all empirical intuitions in space, any break or hiatus between two
phenomena (non datur hiatus)—for we can so express the principle, that
experience can admit nothing which proves the existence of a vacuum, or
which even admits it as a part of an empirical synthesis. For, as
regards a vacuum or void, which we may cogitate as out and beyond the
field of possible experience (the world), such a question cannot come
before the tribunal of mere understanding, which decides only upon
questions that concern the employment of given phenomena for the
construction of empirical cognition. It is rather a problem for ideal
reason, which passes beyond the sphere of a possible experience and
aims at forming a judgement of that which surrounds and circumscribes
it, and the proper place for the consideration of it is the
transcendental dialectic. These four propositions, “In mundo non datur
hiatus, non datur saltus, non datur casus, non datur fatum,” as well as
all principles of transcendental origin, we could very easily exhibit
in their proper order, that is, in conformity with the order of the
categories, and assign to each its proper place. But the already
practised reader will do this for himself, or discover the clue to such
an arrangement. But the combined result of all is simply this, to admit
into the empirical synthesis nothing which might cause a break in or be
foreign to the understanding and the continuous connection of all
phenomena, that is, the unity of the conceptions of the understanding.
For in the understanding alone is the unity of experience, in which all
perceptions must have their assigned place, possible.
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