The Ethics Elephant

From Wikipedia.

The story of the blind men and an elephant appears to have originated in India, but its original source is debated. It has been attributed to the Jainists, Buddhists, and sometimes to the Sufis or Hindus, and has been used by all those groups. The best-known version attributed to an individual in the modern day is the 19th Century poem by John Godfrey Saxe. Buddha used the simile of blind men in his teachings.

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, showing how absolute truths may be relative; the deceptive world of half-truths.

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.
A Poem by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) gives an enjoyable description of the fable:

The poem 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

They conclude that the elephant is like a wall, snake, spear, tree, fan, or rope, depending upon where they touch. They have a heated debate that does not come to physical violence. But in Saxe's version, the conflict is never resolved.

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!