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Articles

Splitting Chairs

Quentin Mareuse distinguishes lots of ways of distinguishing things.

When a rock breaks in two, you get two rocks. But when a chair breaks in two, you get two parts of a chair. Why the difference? What makes something only a part of something else, as opposed to a thing in its own right?

Although the discrepancy initially seems enigmatic, the difference is also remarkably intuitive. No-one would hesitate to call the two pieces of a broken rock rocks in themselves: after all, many rocks are broken pieces of larger rocks. Similarly, no-one in their right mind would call a broken part of a chair a chair.

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