# In Touch with the Look of Solidity **Opening (not a real abstract):** The idea that some objects appear visibly solid is somewhere near the core of our notion of what it is for something to have the appearance of a material object.' In turn, solid objects, and the visible appearances that manifest such solidity, have been at the centre of philosophical theorizing about visual perception and its character.2 But many kinds of visually perceptible entities are not solid objects, and these things have visible appearances that seem to involve distinctive and characteristic departures from the appearance of solidity. The sea may look liquid, for example, rather than solid, and the vapour from an electronic cigarette may look gaseous. Shadows and rainbows do not look like material objects, and the respects in which they do not, at least in part, involve their failure to look solid. In this chapter, I work towards some suggestions that may be **Authors:** [[Thomas Crowther]]