Sir Edmund Whittaker, in his Space and Spirit  (p. 121), 
explains in terms of the recent mathematics and physics, the 
end of the Renaissance idea of continuous, uniform space that 
came in with the notion of visual quantification:

     At this point we escape from the order of the Newtonian 
     cosmos. . . . In the argument as usually presented the 
     language used is appropriate to the case when each 
     effect has only one cause, and each cause has only one 
     effect, so that all chains of causation are simple linear 
     sequences. If we now take into account the fact that an 
     effect may be produced by the joint action of several 
     distinct causes, and also that a cause may give rise to 
     more than one effect, the chains of causation may be 
     branched, and also may have junctions with one another; 
     but since the rule still holds, that the cause always