In Plato's allegory of the cave, we saw how the three men had no idea of what the shapes and shadows behind them were, they only saw distorted views of them and imagined based on their experiences what each shadow was. When one of them was unchained and brought to light and the real word, he couldn't believe what he saw and how everything looked like in real life, so he went back running to the cave to tell to his friends how everything was and how wrong they were about their previous ideas. Although he tried to come back and tell his friends of what he had seen, his friends did not understand him nor recognized him because he was only another distorted shadow shown in the wall as all the others. Plato's cave idea can be seen in many different occasions, for example when someone that lives in a small country where the people have certain beliefs and ideas about the world and and other cultures sets of to a foreign land to learn more about new cultures. This person will be exposed to new ideas and will become smarter and gain much more knowledge about how things work in other places, thus understanding other cultures and how they think. When this person goes back to the land he lived, and tells all other citizens of his small town about the ideas he has experienced and how people were he visited or lived really think, the people in his small community might think he has gone insane or has become weird. This happens because as Plato's suggests, the ways of how people live and think in the other countries are really only shadows for the citizens that have never seen and experienced them, and when one goes out and comes back to explain, they believe he is not the same, in fact, he has become one of those "shadows" as well, thus being rejected or criticized by the members of his former society. Plato's allegory shows how people that have knowledge and try to take the others out of the "cave", sometimes are seen as threats or crazy, when they only have more knowledge or a better ideas than the others around him/her. One very good example of someone reaching in the cave to take people out of it is Galileo when he said the world was round. Because his ideas were so different and seemed so "insane", he was seen as a threat by the church because he opposed their ideas instead of agreeing with them, when he only had discovered the truth and had knowledge that other people around him did not.
Good, Pedro. You used the ideas in Plato's allegory to shed light on cultural awareness and scientific discovery. Both of these examples show me that you understand some of Plato's ideas. The next step is to elaborate your examples a bit more, really fill them out with detail. When you add detail, sometimes you see new relationships you couldn't see at first. This is how to add depth.
ReplyDeleteKnowledge question: How can a scientist effectively explain his or her findings to others? Does is make a difference if the others are scientists or if they have no background in science?
or What are the potential consequences of sharing an idea that breaks with convention?