Consider...this wax. It has just been extracted from the honeycomb; it has not completely lost the taste of the hone; it retains some of the smell of the flowers from which it was gathered; its colour, shape, size are manifest; it is hard, cold, and easily handled, and gives out a sound if you rap it with your knuckle; in fact it has all the properties that seem to be needed for our knowing a body with the utmost distinctness. But while I say this, the wax is put by the fire. It loses the remains of its flavor, the fragrance evaporates, the colour changes, the shape is lost the size increases, it becomes fluid and hot, it can hardly be handled, and it will no longer give you a sound if you rap it. Is the same wax, then, still there?
Sources:
Rene Descartes. Meditations on First Philosophy, Second Meditation. 1642. As rendered in Descartes. Philosophical Writings.
Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Thomas Geach, trans. and eds. New York: MacMillan, 1971. 72.
Peg Tittle, What If ...Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy. Part 5, Epistemology: The Sources of Knowledge. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 108-109.
