If so, then they will not be resolved through further collection of facts or refinement of arguments so long as the contrasting perspectives remain unchanged. But the parable of the elephant suggests that the disagreements are rooted not so much in “errors of fact and argument” as in differences in perspective, in the angle from which the subject matter is approached. Not to be missed it may not come again.ĭisputes among scholars are not new (nor, indeed, is that observation). Rarely does an economist have a chance to offer a verse of uplift. “O how they cling and wrangle, some who claimįor, quarrelling, each to his view they cling. Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift: … In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus. Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing. Then they began to quarrel, shouting, “Yes, it is!” “No, it is not!” “An elephant is not that!” “Yes, it’s like that!” and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.īrethren, the raja was delighted with the scene. And so on.Īsked for a description of the elephant, each firmly and confidently gave his opinion, solidly grounded in empirical experience and all radically different. The chap hanging onto the tail was convinced that he had found a sort of rope. Another, prodded by the tusk, declared that an elephant is like a spear. One walked into its side, concluding that an elephant is like a wall. Each man encountered a different aspect of the elephant and drew a different inference as to its essential nature. In the Buddhist original (?) the number is unspecified.įrom there, however, the stories are similar. Yet again, there were anywhere between three and eight, somewhere in the Middle East.
Or, perhaps there were only three blind men, in Han China. Six blind men of Hindustan, we are told, once went in search of that wonderful creature, the elephant.
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