Caves are a most striking natural phenomenon. All of the caves I have seen in my home country of Australia are of that variety sporting low ceilings opening out on occasion to large cathedral-like spaces and with elegant limestone formations throughout. The Mulu Caves in Sarawak, Malaysia are something else.
Crocodile Dundee might have said of these monsters, You call that a cave. This is a cave.
The Mulu Caves are the size of cathedrals from start to finish. Humans are dwarfed by these monumental edifices, and the only appropriate recourse available to them is to gawk. But nevertheless, they – devils that they are – will insist inevitably on taking photographs, including the dreaded selfies.
See the image above. Or, better still, go to Sarawak and see the real thing.
But this post/blog is about a fictitious cave, not the real thing. It is about, perhaps, the most famous cave in all mythology.
It is Plato’s cave.
In his famous parable, Plato (in about 400 B.C.) describes people chained in his cave, facing a wall therein, and compelled to view exclusively the images or shadows projected onto this wall. The source of these shadows are real events involving real people which/whom they cannot see. They can only see the shadows.
But they are perfectly happy with their lot. I’m alright Jack, they might blithely say. The shadows are their source of entertainment. They are not worried that the shadows are not reality. Merely shadows of reality.
It is generally assumed that, allegorically speaking, Plato was comparing ignorance and education. Ignorance is the state of mind in which the chained people operate. They are ignorant even of their state of ignorance. Education is the supposed advantage enjoyed by those unchained people, seen only as shadows on the wall by the chained ignorant.
So, what advantage does education bring? What benefits do the unchained enjoy that the chained don’t. Plato would maintain that only the educated can know reality. At worst, reality is nothing more than its own reward. At best, reality enables one to impact the real world in a meaningful way.
Take an example from more than 2000 years after Plato trod the earth. The popular view apropos dynamic motion at this time was that a moving object will eventually come to rest in the absence of any impetus from outside. This seemed to be in accord with everyday experience. Everything slows down and eventually stops, doesn’t it?
Enter Isaac Newton. He proposed the opposite. A moving object will continue forever in its state of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force. So, if you believe Newton, things are not always as they seem.
The popular view is the shadow. Newton’s view is reality. Reality, that is to say, as it was understood in the 17th century. Among other things, it paved the way for the industrial revolution.
… how do you reconcile these two opposing views? By acknowledging the existence of an ‘invisible’ external force of friction …
But Newton was not the end of the story.
Enter Albert Einstein. Throwing the cat among the pigeons, he proposed that motion of objects depends on the ‘frame of reference’ within which said motion is being considered. There is no such thing as absolute motion. All motion is relative to the particular frame of reference in play. This is reality as understood in the 20th and 21st centuries. Together with Einstein’s new understanding of the nature of gravity, this notion paved the way for many vital developments of the space age and the digital age, such as GPS as enabled by satellite.
… should you not understand this explanation fully, please join the club of people for whom Einstein’s ideas are too abstruse for them. Abstruse or not, they nevertheless work …
It would appear that reality, as we – presumed to be the unchained – come to understand it is only revealed layer by layer. Newton, as perceptive as he was, could only introduce us to the most elementary layer. Einstein’s view is unlikely to be the definitive ‘layer’ as we go forward, but it will have to do for now.
To explore further the relation between shadow and reality, let’s take an example from the biological sphere of knowledge..
Those chained in the cave would never ask the question, Why are we here? Nor would they bother to ask, What is life?They would be happy simply to be here, accepting life at its face value.
Enter Charles Darwin In the mid 19th century. He proposed that life – including human life – evolved and continues to evolve according to the dictates of natural selection. Neo-evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins have expanded on this theme, bringing into play modern advances in genetics. The concept of the gene was not available to Darwin, which makes the fact of his theory happening in his time all the more incredible. It was a breathtaking leap of imagination by Darwin.
Dawkins and others have put it that, in evolutionary terms, the purpose of life is the perpetuation of genes. Nothing more. We don’t matter. We are just the vehicle enabling this to happen. As such, we are disposable once we have passed on our genetic makeup to our descendants.
Try telling that to our chained brothers! Like all animals apparently, we are blessed (or cursed) with a distinct feeling of identity which might be called I-am-ness. It tells us that, in some sense, we as individuals really do matter. We are not spare parts to be cast off when our job is done.
The neo-evolutionists insist there must be some evolutionary advantage in our sense of identity, in our I-am-ness. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be part of our makeup. They then jump through hoops to explain what this advantage might be. It usually goes along the lines that our strong sense of identity is linked crucially to our instinct for self-preservation. If we don’t contrive to stay alive for long enough, then we really can’t expect to pass on our precious genetic material.
Now evolution is a haphazard and somewhat random process. So, we end up being less than ‘perfect’ creatures. Maybe one day we will ourselves create the perfect creatures ourselves, through Artificial General Intelligence (see my earlier blog entitled Move Fast and Break Things published in 18 January 2024), and then have the catastrophic misfortune to be dominated by them.
Short of AGI, we can create a ‘culture’ to fill in the gaps in our imperfect nature. This culture is a mixed bag. It includes the concept of romantic love, the embrace of family life, the arts, religion, superstition, tribalism, war. Those of us chained to the cave wall will accept unthinkingly the aspects of culture set down for them by others. The unchained folk will know the reality (i.e. that only genes and their propagation matter), but will try to live a life enhanced by the better aspects of our culture.
Now I have a question for your consideration. Will you choose ignorance or education? And will your life be the better for your choice?