Abstraction

By stages of abstraction, it's possible to make a new substance with its own commodity rules and fluctuations that, in turn, crystallize it. This is how people with bad habits gradually earn their carelessness and become more or less bearable stuff, to be justly called by terms of endearment (Sugar, Honey, Sweet, etc., "I love you even though you are very, very fat"). So in that sense it's possible to occlude what you had been talking about and never worry that metaphysics is blinding physics. I think several people have touched on this subject in terms of a linen coat (not sugar) that gradually covers that body.