six blind men and the elephant

The extract below is, as it reads in the preface for the book named “THE SGML HANDBOOK” authored by Charles F. Goldfarb.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

There is a wonderful poem by John G. Saxe called “The Blind Men And The Elephant” that begins:

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
Though all of them were blind,
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

I don’t remember the words, but I recall that each of the blind men approached a different part of the beast. One stroked the tail and decided the elephant was like a rope. Another touched it’s side and concluded that elephants were like walls.

One blind man grabbed the trunk and determined it was another form of snake. The fourth put his arms around one of the elephant’s legs and declared elephants to be like trees.

The fifth man I think, felt the elephant’s ear and decided it was a poorly tailored leather jacket and some such, and I don’t remember what the sixth did at all. In any event, they all wound up arguing about the true nature of the elephant with each being partly right and all of them being wrong.

Saxe’s poem was intended as a dig at theologians, who necessary argue about something that none of them can see. However it can apply just as well to some of today’s high tech community. Faced with something new and unusual, these experts and specialists, though sighted sometimes fail to see more than what they have been trained to expect.

Which brings us to the subject of this book. The Standard Generalized Markup Language has been in many respects a victim of this modern kind of blindness. There has been a dismaying tendency to characterize SGML solely in the terms of the aspect with which one happens to make contact:

    - It is a tagging language
    - It handles logical structures
    - It is a file linking and addressing schheme
    - It is a database language for text
    - It is a foundation for multimedia and hhypertext
    - It is a syntax for text processing stylle sheets
    - It allows coded text to be reused in waays not anticipated by the coder
    - It is a documentation representation laanguage for any architecture
    - It is a notation for any kind of structture
    - It is a meta language for defining docuument types
    - It represents hierarchies
    - It is an extensible document descriptioon language
    - It is a standard for communication amonng different hardware platforms and software applications.

SGML is and does all of these things, but the whole is much more than the sum of the parts. Moreover it is, only by understanding the whole that one can make use of SGML.

I think that a high tech version of the Saxe’s poem would have a dramatic ending: The elephant eventually gets irritated by all the poking and flumbing and runs off, trampling the six blind men in the process.

The moral of course is that if you are going to mess around with something powerful that you do not fully understand- even something benign – you had better do it with your eyes open.

I hope THE SGML HANDBOOK will be the eye-opener that lets you see the elephant.

Period.

Reference to the actual poem by Saxe:

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
Though all of them were blind,
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant
And, happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me, but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis very clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal
And, happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spake:
"I see," quoth he, "The Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
"What most the wondrous beast is like
Is very plain," quoth he;
"Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said, "Even the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can:
This marvel of an elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong.
Though each was partly in the right,
They all were in the wrong!

-- John Godfrey Saxe