Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Plato’s Cave Allegory: My interpretation


One application could be when people thought the sun went around the earth instead of the other way around, like we know today. The “cave” would be the people that believe that they are better than others, and the general population would be the “prisoners”. The idea that everything in the solar system goes around the earth are the “shadows and voices”, and people wanting to believe that they are better than others are the “shackles”.
                 
The escapee is Galileo Galilei and he finds that the sun doesn’t go around the earth, that in fact it is the other way around! (This, by the way, is called “heliocentrism”). Galileo tries to spread his discoveries (he is now rescuing the prisoners) of how the earth moves around a stationary sun, instead of the other way around. However, the “prisoners” don’t believe Galileo when he tells them of this crazy idea of the earth going around the sun, instead of the other way around?
               
Eventually, the “prisoners” escape because they finally come out of denial and see the logic in the “real world”. Galileo keeps trying to convince the “prisoners” but they keep refusing to believe him until he dies. However, even then, it takes them a really long time to realize that Galileo was right, and the “real world” actually exists.

No comments:

Post a Comment