The difficulty of arriving at objective truth whilst conducting observation from a subjective viewpoint is neatly illustrated by the story. It is certainly the case that we can fail to comprehend the true picture in a given situation because we are often unable to access an objective vantage point. Similarly, one possible explanation for the existence of major differences of opinion between rational human beings in search of objective truth, is that individuals may have effectively grasped a different aspect of what is the overall truth.

In addition to our empirical method of reasoning which underpins scientific investigation, there are indeed other important mechanisms which operate as truth-communication channels. In direct communication, for example, we are simply informed of the truth, which is either 'imposed by concensus or imparted ... by authority'. Additionally, and importantly, by what may be described as gut-feeling, an idea may be effectively hall-marked with the ring of truth. It is by this process, which circumvents language, that the truth is sometimes experienced by the influence of great art; through which it is 'registered as an emotion'14.

It may be that truth is rather like the elephant; and the blind observers are perhaps like our scientists and theologians. Although an academic concensus states that science itself is entirely incompatible with biblical revelation, my proposal is that it may simply be perception and interpretation which are the major obstacles to our understanding of the broader unity which unites scientific and biblical truth - this is The Elephant Proposition.

Concerning the truth, The Oxford Companion to the Mind also raises the important issue of objectivity, ‘some kind of correspondence is what is meant [by truth]; but it is ultimately impossible to observe correspondences between appearance and reality15’. It is, of course, quite impossible to examine the natural world in a completely objective manner. We simply cannot escape its confines: ‘it would require a kind of God’s-eye-view to see that the observations of a man, or the understanding of a science, correspond to the world’, the writer concludes.

It is important to note that there is an alternative philosophical proposal, which we will here briefly consider, that reality and therefore truth, is not an absolute quantity at all; but that it is entirely relative to the observer. Although this idea was first debated by the ancient Greek philosophers, there is modern scientific support for the proposal from the field of quantum physics: ‘quantum physicists - basing their statements on mathematical formulas that are valid and resoundingly successful - take a philosophical leap and state that reality does not exist without a measurement taking place16’ .

The field of physics which deals with subatomic particles holds that electrons, from which all matter is made, cannot be absolutely quantified. In 1927, Werner Heisenberg showed the physical impossibility of knowing the exact vector - the simultaneous speed and direction - of an electron: this is known as the uncertainty principle. It seems that the very matter from which we are made is subject to a basic law which permits the existence of uncertainty at its most fundamental level.