The continuum (kon-TIN-uh-muh) is a range or series that gradually changes but has no clearly defined ends. You can find it in such areas as the age of consent, the severity of crimes, the gender expectations for men and women, and the amount of discipline a parent uses with their children.
It’s hard to imagine any aspect of life without the continuum. The fact that kids aren’t all at the same level along a spectrum is one of the more fundamental aspects of childhood. Likewise, it’s impossible to tell where an illness or condition starts and where it stops in the time-space continuum of relativity.
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The science fiction play-by-mail game Continuum was based on the concept of the space-time continuum.
The term continuum has been used in mathematics for centuries, but it wasn’t popularized until the 20th century. It was coined by mathematician Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote that ‘the continuum is unity in multiplicity, the whole is contained in the parts, and the parts are contained in each other.’