Followers of some of the oldest religions on this planet have told variations of this parable. It goes something like this:
Six persons are blindfolded and led into a large room that has, without their knowledge, an elephant. Each one is then asked to describe a different part of the animal by what they can feel. One puts his hands around a leg and proclaims that it is a support column for a balcony. Another feels the tail and is sure the object is a rope. After touching the elephant’s trunk someone else is sure that it is the limb of a tree. A fourth person feels its ear and is positive the thing in question is a hand fan. Hands on the beast’s belly feel like a ceiling to another. And finally, the person who grabs ...
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