Full Idea
Burke has argued in a series of papers that the lump of clay which constitutes the statue is numerically distinct from the lump of clay which exists before or after the statue exists. The first is a statue, while the second is merely a lump of clay.
Gist of Idea
Maybe the clay becomes a different lump when it becomes a statue
Source
report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects
Book Reference
Koslicki,Kathrin: 'The Structure of Objects' [OUP 2008], p.179
A Reaction
Koslicki objects that this introduces radically different persistence conditions from normal. It would mean that a pile of sugar was a different pile of sugar every time a grain moved (even slightly). You couldn't step into the same sugar twice.