Full Idea
The mereological sum of the coffee in my cup, the ink in this sentence, a nearby sparrow, and my left shoe is a miscellaneous mess of an object, yet its boundaries are by no means unrelated to the joints of nature.
Gist of Idea
A gerrymandered mereological sum can be a mess, but still have natural joints
Source
David Lewis (Putnam's Paradox [1984], 'What Might')
Book Reference
Lewis,David: 'Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology' [CUP 1999], p.65
A Reaction
In that case they do, but if there are no atoms at the root of physics then presumably their could also be thoroughly jointless assemblages, involving probability distributions etc. Even random scattered atoms seem rather short of joints.