The new relevance of "relevant feature".

I came across the concept of "relevant feature" years ago in a discussion held by Stu Kauffman, a theoretical biologist, where he asked us, "What's the relevant feature of a frog"?
"It jumps"; "it's slimy"; "it's an amphibian" etc. . His answer made my head spin- "it depends on its proximity to a snake or to a fly".

I didn't know why my head spun in that moment, I just knew that it did; until today. For whatever reason, this morning with my cup of coffee and thinking journal opened to today's blank page, I wrote at the top "relevant feature and the art of interpretation". "Where did that come from? Neither had been on my mind of late. What came next surprised me even more.

The next line down I wrote, "The blindfolded men each touching their own part of the elephant" allegory and why I've never "liked" it may have to do something with "relevant feature". I felt the invitational hmmm.

In the allegory, a number of men- let's say six- are blindfolded and led to an elephant where for the first time they will each touch their own part of it. After they each had time to contemplate what they were seeing (witnessing) through their rookie touching, they exclaimed out loud their discoveries. (And as you may already guess, their exclamations differed- to say the least.) I know this analogy is pointing to something worth while, still, something about it has always rankled me in a nagging way. And then I wrote this next.

Each argues their case for their private perception being the "feature of relevance"

    a. None have seen the whole.

    b. None have seen the other parts as the others have perceived them.

At this point I begin connecting all this with my own theological discipline of hermeneutics. A favorite part of theological thinking for me, hermeneutics is the art and science of interpreting (in my case, Biblical texts). Out of the latency of this blank page I could see a new and important hermeneutic principle developing:

The more of the whole one can see, the more one is able to judge which features should be deemed as relevant in regard to a question being posed.  

I can now see why this allegory has nagged me all these years: The men were hobbled by not being able to see the whole!  How would you expect these men to do other wise?!

Of course, this illuminates the question, "what is it to see the whole when we're so trained in only looking at parts? I can see a way, and as this allegory only gets to part of the problem, I now know how to get into the rest of it.