The Blind Men and the Elephant as a Metaphor for Surface Analysis, as Applied to the Preparation and Analysis of New, Highly Stable Materials for Separations Science

Most of us heard the story of the blind men and the elephant as children. In this old tale from India each man in a group of blind men touches a different part of an elephant. Each walks away with a different experience and subsequently argues that the elephant is like a spear (the tusk), a rope (the tail), a wall (the flank), etc. Only the combination of their stories would have provided a complete, or at least more complete, picture of what an elephant really is.