 The office appears to contain a single wooden desk. The desk is constituted by a single hunk of wood whose surface forms a sharp boundary with the environment, without even a single cellulose molecule coming loose from the others. Call this hunk of wood ‘Woodrow’. Now consider the object consisting of all of Woodrow’s parts except for a single cellulose molecule, ‘Molly’, making up part of Woodrow’s surface. Call this ever-so-slightly smaller hunk of wood ‘Woodrow-minus’. Because Woodrow-minus is extraordinarily similar to Woodrow, there is considerable pressure to accept that Woodrow-minus is a desk as well. This, in short, is the problem of the many.