The Platonic solids are sometimes also called "cosmic figures".?

Plato was a philosopher, not a mathematician. This weird equation of figures to elements comes from perhaps his strangest dialogue, the "Timaeus". Wikipedia gives all of the account: a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid#History" rel="nofollow"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_so…/a