Blind Man and the Elephant

We all know the story about the blind men examining the elephant.
Each man examined only one part of the elephant, but not being able to see the rest of the elephant, declared the elephant to be entirely of this nature. Example: This animal is large and tree like. (having examined the leg)

Nidhi Kaila in India uses this story in an interesting way:

Nidhi writes:

"Whenever I’m doing a session heavy on theory, I start the session by telling the participants that theories, by themselves, are the 6 blind men of Hindustan, who went to see the elephant (we all know the story). A theory gives us a perspective to the concept, but no theory, by itself, gives us the whole concept.

If we put all the theories together, we might get a more wholesome idea of the whole concept, but this wholesome idea may or may not be accurate.

Exercise: Imagine that the 6 men of Hindustan realized that they were exploring different parts of an elephant, and decided to put their wits together and try and imagine the WHOLE elephant, because they know the description of each part.

Divide people into groups of 6 or fewer, and ask them to pretend that the blind men have decided to get together and figure out what the whole elephant looks like. Give them 10 minutes to do this activity. Then ask each team to present. Usually, you should find that people are either biased because they have seen a real elephant, or that they will not be able to describe a real elephant in total. That is what theory is like"