IN one of his books, William James tells a story of how, during a camping holiday, he returned from a solitary walk to find the rest of the camping party engaged in a ferocious philosophical dispute. The problem was this. Suppose that a squirrel is on one side of a tree-trunk and a man on the other side. The man starts going round the tree, but however fast he goes round, the squirrel goes round in the same direction, so that he keeps the trunk of the tree between the man and himself. The philosophical question was as to whether the man went round the squirrel or not. The disputants were evenly divided, and it is not surprising to learn that they had disputed for a long time without coming any nearer to a solution of the problem. They appealed to James, who replied that it was not a question of facts but of words, of how one is to use the words ‘go round’. Continue reading →