"they would first realize that what they had previously believed to be “true reality” was nothing but shadow and illusion"

And thus began Plato's quest for perfection, a chimera that doesn't exist and wasted many years of effort by brilliant thinkers and eventually led, through Aristotle, to the the Catholic Church's weird interpretation of the All God with all his powers and contradictions, and questions like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

What evolution and engineering show us is to not let perfection be the enemy of good enough. That seems to be reality, particularly if humans are biological creatures in a material world. If you live elsewhere, good, but don't try to tell me about Plato's beliefs about reality.