  A problem for the Principle of Predominance is to determine what it is to be a predominant ingredient, especially given the Everything-in-Everything and No Smallest principles. A classic example is the following: the gold in this gold ring is that discontinuous part of the total mixture in which gold predominates. But now, as Strang says, “Consider the gold which predominates as an ingredient: does it also, like the original piece of gold, contain within it an admixture of all other substances? If so, it is gold because gold predominates in it as an ingredient; and we can ask the same question about the ingredient of the ingredient, and so on ad infinitum” (Strang 1963, 101; see also Cornford 1930). Because there can be no pure gold (there is no pure anything), it becomes difficult to see what the gold could be that predominates in anything. But if I cannot determine what predominates in it, I cannot determine what anything is.