Is it possible to divide something into an infinite amount of parts?

It depends on what one means by the 'thing' in question. According to the principles of geometry, a line is infinitely divisible, although of course it has basic components, points. But what of ordinary, middle-sized objects, such as tables and chairs? Certain early modern philosophers, such as Leibniz, believed that material things were not only infinitely divisible, but that they were also actually divided. (Hence, Leibniz concluded, material things weren't real things, because they lacked what he called a 'true principle of unity', and the only 'real' things were souls, which, being immaterial, could not be infinitely divided.) In a recent article, "Van Inwagen and the Possibility of Gunk," the metaphysician Ted Sider argues that it is possible that objects in the world are infinitely divisible and even lack basic constituents, like the points of a line. According to Sider, it is logically possible that the world consists only of 'atomless gunk', that is, "that it divides further into smaller and...