The Elephant and the Six Blind Men

Title: The Elephant and the Six Blind Men
Book: Fifty Famous Stories Retold
Author: James Baldwin
Date: September 6, 2010
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

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            There are many variations of this story but the basic plot line remains constant with six blind men feeling a different part of the elephant and concluding what an elephant must be like. One states that it is like a fan (touching its ears); another man states that an elephant is like a wall (touching the elephant’s side), another claims that it is like a spear (feeling the tusks). Another disagreed and said the elephant was similar to a snake because he felt the trunk, but another argued that it was like a tree feeling its legs. The last man thought the others were all mistaken, and that the elephant was clearly like a rope by touching its tail. In the end, everyone had their own ideas about what an elephant was like and had their own vision of what it would look like.

            Everyone has their own opinions and their own ways of perceiving something. How they develop their ideas about a certain object depends on their experience. If the six men combined all of their ideas, they would be able to figure out what an elephant was really like. In this sense, we should be open to new ideas and try to collaborate with another, instead of arguing that one was right over the other. Details are important when collaborating, but we should be open to the big picture. In a way, knowledge is like a puzzle. We must put all the possible perceptions together in order to see the whole picture, rather than limiting our thought to our own opinions. However, one must wonder, ‘When will the puzzle ever be complete?’ How will we know that we are taking in the big picture, that the puzzle is complete? Is knowledge ever absolute, unchangeable? If we’re always open to ideas, doesn’t this mean that our knowledge of the certain subject is always growing and never final? How will we account for the thoughts that are nonsense, that we know is false? After all, they are all still perceptions. How do we know what is false?