Request for Question Clarification by
markj-ga
on
20 Apr 2005 07:47 PDT
cp888 --
This clearly not an answer to your question, but it may help you to
refine your recollection of the quote.
Could you be thinking of some version of the famous example of the
blind men and the elephant? Its point is to demonstrate the idea that
the nature of reality is determined by one's point of view; that is, a
blind man who feels an elephant's trunk will describe an elephant one
way, while one who feels its ear will describe it another way. Here
is one online reference to this idea:
"Or take the other classic example, the blind men and the elephant.
What is an elephant? Is it what you feel? What you feel and see? But
how about its internal organs? After all, to really know the reality
of an elephant, you have to know that eats plants, that it has lungs,
etc., right? But then, what about its blood? Don't you know its
"reality" better if you know that its blood is made of little cells
floating in a liquid, and so forth? But this takes us back to the
question of what technology lets us know about reality... and what
reality "really" is, and how we know it. Would the "reality" of an
elephant be different if we only could see it with x-rays, instead of
"visible" light? No, you say? But to a being that only knew about
seeing with x-rays, an elephant's real essence would be very different
than what we understand its essence to be, wouldn't it? Or would it?"
Ask a Philosopher: Twenty-first Set of Questions and Answers
http://www.pathways.plus.com/questions/answers21.html
markj-ga
