Inductive Fallacies - Blind Men and an Elephant (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in India. In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one touches a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes on what they felt, and learn they are in complete disagreement. The story is used to indicate that reality may be viewed differently depending upon one's perspective, suggesting that what seems an absolute truth may be relative due to the deceptive nature of half-truths. The blind men and the elephant(wall relief in Northeast Thailand)Various versions are similar, and differ primarily in how the elephant's body parts are described, how violent the conflict becomes, and how (or if) the conflict among the men and their perspectives is resolved. For example, in the popular British children's television show Aquila, the professor describes the truth as "an elephant surrounded by blind men". He explains how each man can feel a part of the elephant, and believe that they have the whole of the elephant, however in reality they only have a part of it, and no one can have the whole elephant, just like no one can know the whole truth about matters. The story has been attributed to the Sufis, Jainists, Buddhists or Hindus, and has been used by all those groups. The version best-known in the West is the 19th Century poem by John Godfrey Saxe. Buddha used the simile of blind men in Tittha sutta in Udana (Pali canon). Buddha used a row of blind men as an example in Canki sutta as well to explain the blind following of a leader or an old text that had come down generation after generation. A Jain version of the story says that six blind men were asked to determine what a... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=5289291