I've been thinking about how any object can be split into infinitely smaller pieces and how we may say that there is a particular object or entity, but it has an upper portion and lower portion. In essence, what we are doing in these cases is splitting the entity into more parts.
For example, if I were to look at a table, I could see that that table is a seperate entity than the floor or air surrounding it. I could additionally go further and say that the table has legs and a table top, thus further splitting the entity of the table into multiple parts. I could then go even further to say that there is the lower half of the table leg and the upper half of the table leg. My question though, is how it is that we make such distinctions about entities and whether there are any studies or articles that can help me better understand that idea.
I know that is has to do with comparing and contrasting qualities that an object has, but why are people prone to making certain assertions about certaint entities over others? Furthermore, wouldn't that mean that the way we categorize and group things is all relative and has no basis in true reality? Wouldn't that mean that everything is a single entity?
I may have gone a bit off topic here, but, what I'm ultimately asking is this:
How is it that humans group objects together and contrast them by "making new entities?"
- If this ability is relative, does it have a concrete basis in reality?