While teaching a PhD course in quantitative genetics, I gradually developed a one-hour module on philosophy of science. Among the topics discussed were Plato’s Allegory of the Cave — in particular, the opening exchange between Socrates and Glaucon — and a simple sketch illustrating the famous cave.
Over the years, I found myself returning to this allegory. What began as a teaching aid gradually evolved into a broader reflection on a question that lies at the heart of modern statistics: under what conditions can we learn about hidden realities from incomplete observations? From missing data and causal inference to prediction and estimation, much of scientific inference can be viewed as an attempt to reason from shadows.
I explore this idea further in:
From Shadows to Statistics
Hossein Jorjani 