Timaeus (dialogue)  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand. Plato holds his Timaeus and points his index finger to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms

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Timaeus[1] is one of Plato's dialogues, mostly in the form of a long monologue given by the title character, written circa 360 BC. The work puts forward speculation on the nature of the physical world and human beings. It is followed by the dialogue Critias.

Speakers of the dialogue are Socrates, Timaeus of Locri, Hermocrates, and Critias. Some scholars believe that it is not the Critias of the Thirty Tyrants who is appearing in this dialogue, but his grandfather, who is also named Critias.

Timaeus claims that the minute particle of each element had a special geometric shape: tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and cube (earth).

See also

• Sophist
• Statesman
• Philebus
• Johannes Kepler
• Leibniz
• Plotinus
• Esoteric cosmology
• Religious cosmology
• Creation myth
• Teleological argument
• Atlantis
• The gods have given us one disobedient and unruly member