Academic scientists and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

By Jonathan Thon. Today’s young academic scientists are trapped in the lab, which is not so different from a cave. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is therefore a fitting analogy, and as a young academic scientist I have often felt that I was facing a blank wall where shadows of things passing in front of a fire behind me were projected. It is only by leaving the cave that I have come to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all. More...