Sorites paradox

The Sorites paradox refers to the questioning of whether one thing stops becoming "something" after a certain amount of small, incremental, often unnoticeable changes:

• If a culture has continuously borrowed from others, when did its authenticity end?
• If a red shirt gets one drop of blue paint every day, on which day does it become a blue shirt?
• If you remove a grain of sand from a heap of sand, when does it stop becoming a heap of sand?

Related concepts

• Ship of Theseus
  • how much of a ship (or building) would you have to renovate before it becomes a new ship (or building) altogether?
• "Song of Theseus"
  • if a song gets remixed so heavily, does it become a new song altogether?
    • Sigur Rós' "Ég fæ jólagjöf" is ultimately based on José Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" but sounds hardly like it:

The idea that something "is" something breaks down when we talk of incremental changes to it; that things behave more like waves than particles, or spectrum-like phenomena!