The bible says that in the beginning "the earth was without form and void". Physicists tell us that we live in a soup of fields occupying the space-time continuum. Yet our mental lives are vivid encounters with objects with clear features. How do these discrete things emerge and, in fact, why do all human languages classify objects and events so similarly? I want to talk about the statistical roots of discreteness, focussing on vision and the properties of images and on making sense of shape.