Full Idea
Different things can be made of the same parts at different times, as when the tinkertoy house is taken apart and put back together as a tinkertoy car.
Clarification
'Tinkertoy' is Lego to you
Gist of Idea
Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times
Source
David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants')
Book Reference
Lewis,David: 'Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology' [CUP 1999], p.95
A Reaction
More important than it looks! This is Lewis's evasion of the question of the structure of the parts. Times will individuate different structures, but if I take type-identical parts and make a house and a car simultaneously, are they type-identical?