Can we settle this: how many holes does a straw have?
Can we settle this: how many holes does a straw have?
At work we somehow landed on the topic of how many holes a human has, which then evolved into a heated discussion on the classic question of how many holes does a straw have.
I think it's two, but some people are convinced that it's one, which I just don't understand. What are your thoughts?
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None. Colloquially, we use "hole" in all kinds of weird ways. As others have pointed out, topologically a straw is no different to a torus (donut) that clearly has one "hole"... but I'd like to focus instead on the linguistic definition of "hole", not the colloquial or mathematic definitions.
A hole can either mean:
- a perforation ("a hole in my shirt", "a bullet hole", etc) - which is, specifically, "a hole or pattern made by or as if by piercing or boring"
- a gap ("a hole in your reasoning", "a hole in my heart", etc)
- a hollowed out or burrowed place ("a hole in the road", "a fox hole", etc)
i think we're not talking about 2. It seems to require some larger uniform structure or set of items in which an item is missing. 1 and 3 seem really similar to me: both seem to require some active removal of matter to qualify. All of these definitions point towards a subtractive process, where something of a larger whole (heh) is removed or absent.
Most straws, I'll venture a guess, are not manufactured solid and then bored out.. so I don't think it applies here. So I don't think a straw matches a fitting definition of "hole". A straw is created additively by assembling the "shell" by some means, not subtractively. Donuts, by comparison, had holes punched in them. A subtractive operation. Rubber bands have not had holes punched in them... they're additive. Not holes.
Similarly (because I see a lot of talk about buttholes and mouths here too), your esophagus and digestive tract (and veins and all kinds of other things) were formed in a similar additive manner, not by forming a mass of meat and boring through the passage, and thus would similarly not qualify as "holes" (in my opinion).
I'm seeing a lot of this kind of taxonomical argument relying on material being removed, but it's not convincing. A taxonomical argument that relies on commonly accepted definitions, but does not include commonly accepted examples, is logically flawed.
It's normal, accepted usage to describe your anus and so forth as holes, despite no material having been removed.
Similarly, it's normal to describe Cheerios as having holes in the middle, or bagels as having holes in the middle, or a pool noodle as having a hole through it, or any number of similar things that are formed without any material being removed. It extends to the metaphysical, in fact; one can have a hole in their logic, for instance, without the implications that their logic must once have contained this item, until it was somehow removed.
A hole is an entirely contained negative space; I don't think it requires anything to have been removed.