A man circles a tree while a squirrel clings to its far side. Did he go round it?
A squirrel clings to a tree trunk. A man walks a full circle around the tree, but the squirrel keeps scuttling round the trunk to stay exactly opposite him, so he never sees its back. Half his friends insist he went round the squirrel. Half insist he didn't. Who's right?
Reveal the answer
Both are, once you separate the two meanings of 'going round': if it means passing through the north, east, south and west positions relative to the squirrel, he did; if it means successively seeing its front, side, back and other side, he didn't. William James used this real holiday-cabin argument in his 1907 lectures on pragmatism to show that disputes over words dissolve once you pin down what each side actually means by them.
— William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking — Lecture II, 1907