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Aristotle, who had been Plato's student at the Academy, agreed on this point with his former mentor, emphasizing additionally that fire has sometimes been mistaken for aether. However, in his Book On the Heavens he introduced a new "first" element to the system of the classical elements of Ionian philosophy .
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 ...
Plato (428/423 – 348/347 BC) seems to have been the first to use the term "element (στοιχεῖον, stoicheîon)" in reference to air, fire, earth, and water. [13] The ancient Greek word for element, stoicheion (from stoicheo , "to line up") meant "smallest division (of a sun-dial), a syllable", as the composing unit of an alphabet it ...
Plato in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C associated platonic solids with the four classical elements. Aristotle added a fifth element, aithêr (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.
This fact led these five solids, now called the Platonic solids, to play a prominent role in the philosophy of Plato (and consequently, also influenced later Western Philosophy) who associated each of the four classical elements with a regular solid: earth with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the ...
The fifth element (i.e. Platonic solid) was the dodecahedron, whose faces are not triangular, and which was taken to represent the shape of the Universe as a whole, possibly because of all the elements it most approximates a sphere, which Timaeus has already noted was the shape into which God had formed the Universe.
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Yours are Zeus' lofty dwelling, endless power too; of the stars, of the sun, and of the moon you claim a share. O tamer of all, O fire-breather, O life's spark for every creature, sublime Ether, best cosmic element, radiant, luminous, starlit offspring, I call upon you and I beseech you to be temperate and clear. [55]