Platonic Solid and the Elements

The Pla­ton­ic solids are promi­nent in the phi­los­o­phy of Pla­to, their name­sake. Pla­to wrote about them in the dia­logue Timaeus c. 360 B.C. in which he asso­ci­at­ed each of the four clas­si­cal ele­ments (earth, air, water, and fire) with a reg­u­lar sol­id. Earth was asso­ci­at­ed with the cube, air with the octa­he­dron, water with the icosa­he­dron, and fire with the tetra­he­dron. Of the fifth Pla­ton­ic sol­id, the dodec­a­he­dron, Pla­to obscure­ly remarked, “…the god used [it] for arrang­ing the con­stel­la­tions on the whole heav­en”. Aris­to­tle added a fifth ele­ment, aither (aether in Latin, “ether” in Eng­lish) and pos­tu­lat­ed that the heav­ens were made of this ele­ment, but he had no inter­est in match­ing it with Pla­to’s fifth sol­id.

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