Answer to Question #130742 in Math for grew

Question

The blind men and the elephant is a famous indian fable that tells the story of six blind sojourners that come across different parts of an elephant in their life
journeys. In turns each blind creates own version of reality from that limited experience and perspective. How you relate this story in the study of mathematics?

Answer 1

Seeing the whole is difficult. Complementing one vision / feeling with another, enriching one point of view with the next is what is important.

Why in the end did the blind people from the parable begin to argue and quarrel? Because each of them perceived only a certain part of the object and from this data a general - incomplete, erroneous - representation was created. And each defended his point of view, relying only on his own feelings.

We can use Bohr's principle of complementarity, according to which, for a complete description of phenomena, it is necessary to use two mutually exclusive ("additional") sets of concepts, the totality of which provides comprehensive information about these phenomena as integral.

According to Bohr, the physical picture of the phenomenon and its mathematical description are complementary. The creation of a physical picture of the world requires neglect of details and leads away from mathematical precision. Conversely, trying to accurately describe the phenomenon mathematically makes it difficult to understand clearly. Indeed, the mathematical description is based on logic, while the physical picture of the world is based on guesses, intuition, images.