ABSTRACT
The sorites argument and the ontological problem it raises with essentialism was the core of my argument in Chapters 2 and 3 to abandon monistic essentialism, the idea that reality is intrinsically articulated into beings and properties. If there were precise and systematic delineations in microparticle terms of the objects of ordinary life, we could happily be neo-Aristotelians, regarding the medium-sized objects and organisms he took to be basic substances as respectable entities, but entities having compound natures derived from the more fundamental natures of the microparticles into which nature was articulated.
