Shadows

In Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, the philosopher describes a world where people live in a cave, viewing the entire world by the shadows that dance in front of them. The shadows are projected from the world behind them, but they think that the shadows are the “real” world—they give names to them, and they live as if this is reality. Eventually, the prisoners break free and enter the real world, discovering that everything they were watching was but a distortion of the real thing. The al...