History of shadows: Cabinet Magazine

Plato's: "The prisoners in the cave were incapable of gazing directly into the light of knowledge. They had their backs to this bright light and saw only the shadows cast on the cave walls. Plato's point was that they saw only the shadow of reality, not reality itself - both were copies of reality. And so, from the beginning on, to attain true knowledge one had to renounce the shadow stage and progress out of the cave......