Plato

For the first time, Plato distinguished between the "world of things"
and the "world of ideas." The idea (eidos), in Plato's view, is the
beginning of a thing, its model, and the fundamental actuality of any
specific object. For instance, the "idea of a table" may or may not
match a specific table in actuality. Although they will continue to
exist separately, the "idea of the table" and the "concrete table" will
both exist.
The well-known Platonic myth of the cave, in which people only see
other people's shadows on the cave wall instead of actual items or
people, serves as a striking example of how the world is divided into
the world of ideas and the world of physical objects. In this
metaphor, the shadows cast on the cave wall represent the
individual things in the world, whilst the things represented by their
shadows on the wall represent the things that, in Plato's opinion, are
more basic and actual.