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Editorial

Reality Check

by Rick Lewis

Ancient Greek culture was a fever dream of myths, gods, spirits and superstitions. The early philosophers stood out from their time by exhibiting a bracing scepticism, a restlessly questioning temperament, a willingness to cut through all the nonsense and find the truth. Unsurprisingly, then, one of the biggest questions for them was, which things are real, and which aren’t?

Plato in his Republic concocted a famous story which vividly illustrates the question and provides one solution to it: the Allegory of the Cave. In Plato’s tale, a group of captives sit in an underground cavern where they have spent their whole lives. They are chained up side by side so that all they can look at is the cave wall in front of them.

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