Look A Horse In The Mouth?

By Leo Gura - April 4, 2025

“In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning of the fourteenth day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-of ways of finding truth, contrary to all the teachings of the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife, the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man declaring the problem to be an everlasting mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered the same writ down.”

Attributed to Francis Bacon but certainly a fictitious story.

Nevertheless, this story illustrates deep problems of epistemology: dogma, group-think, appeals to authority, shooting the messenger, demonization, and paradigm lock.

Empiricists, scientists, rationalists, and atheists like to quote this story to point out the dogmatic ways of religion and the triumph of empirical method and enlightenment values. But they draw the lesson too narrowly. There is a deeper level, a deeper lesson to this story. Two lessons actually:

1. Empirical method itself is non-obvious. It took mankind a long, long time just to understand that reality requires empirical testing to understand. Many today still haven’t learned this lesson, which is why belief, faith, dogma, and superstition are so prevalent. But today scientists themselves take empirical method for granted as something simple, obvious, and given — never bothering to question its limits.
2. But the deepest lesson of all is that the real issue here is not religion vs empiricism, it is paradigm lock. And paradigm lock is not limited to any paradigm such as faith or armchair metaphysics. Paradigm lock also, and especially, applies to empiricism itself. It is actually unknown if empiricism is the correct epistemology. Just because it happens to work on a horse does not mean it will work across the board, nor that it would get mankind to ultimate truth. That assumption is an unempirical performative contradiction or a self-refuting idea.

Today, if I stand up in front of a group of scientists at a conference on the nature of mind and tell them that mind is God & Love: just unbend in a manner coarse and look within yourself to find answer to your questionings, they will fly upon me just like that youthful friar, cast me out forthwith, and declare the problem an everlasting mystery because of grievous dearth of historical and empirical evidence. 600 years have passed but the epistemic lesson has not been learned.

As non-obvious as it is that you must look inside the mouth of a horse to know how many teeth it has, it is equally non-obvious that you cannot apply this method to understand ultimate Reality. Maybe — just maybe — ultimate Reality has unenumerable teeth. What do you do then?

It’s amazing that it never occurs to most scientists today that counting the number of teeth on a horse is not a good way of understanding horses, nor ultimate Reality.

If your method is to count your way up to God, you’ll never arrive.

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Note: I was asked, So what’s the solution? What’s the right method? The solution is to do serious philosophy (epistemology & ontology). Understanding Reality requires a serious attitude towards the problem, taking nothing for granted. Epistemic mistakes happen when humans underestimate the seriousness of what it means to know anything. You must treat knowing like it’s the most profound and sacred thing. Like you’re defusing a nuclear bomb. Despite what scientists say, they do not have this degree of epistemic and metaphysical seriousness. The right attitude is critical. Philosophy only begins when you understand the depth of the problem. How can anything be known at all? How can anything exist at all?

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