How Things Persist

'How Things Persist is a careful and clever defence of stage theory... the book is not only a worthy defence of a novel ontology, it is also an instructive survey of the metaphysics of material objects in general and the philosophy of persistence in particular.' -MindThe world is remarkably stable -- amidst the flux, physical objects continue to persist. But how do things persist? Are they spread out through time as they are spread out through space? Or is persistence very different from spatial extension? These ancient metaphysical questions are at the forefront of contemporary debate once more. Katherine Hawley provides a wide-ranging yet accessible study of this key issue. She also makes a major contribution to current debates about change, vagueness, and language.