For Plato, the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, were manifestations of geometric shapes.* Earth is the cube; Air, the octahedron; Fire, the tetrahedron; Water, the icosahedron. Those are four of the five perfect and regular solids. The fifth regular solid is the dodecahedron.
Now, one might wonder how the four elements fit into a scheme that has five representative forms. Not to worry. In the Timaeus, Plato gives the dodecahedron an encompassing position: It is the entire ordered universe, what we often call the cosmos. Order appears to prevail in Plato’s structure of the universe. And in light of his ascription of creation to a master builder or craftsman of some kind, an orderly universe makes (teleological) sense. But of course, it’s only the conscious universe that recognizes and desires order. Sure, we can say with Einstein that the rules of order are universal, that, for example, gravity plays the same role here that it plays across the cosmos and that on a macro scale determinism prevails, and cause leads to effect. We can even argue, if we choose, that apparent disorder in nature is merely concealed order: The chaos of weather, for example, is the product of numerous, even if uncounted and unidentified, physical processes, such as the flap of the butterfly’s wing in the Amazon that causes an unpredicted tornado in Kansas.
In the 25 centuries since the rise of Greek philosophy and attempts to explain the world either through theology or science, order pervades in some form. It’s only when we get to the principle of entropy that we see disorder in the cosmos. Sure, in many explanations across those last 2,500 years, chaos is the point of departure from which an orderly universe arises, one with identifiable “laws” that keep it together. But what started out as chaos in the modern interpretation of creation will end as chaos and complete entropy.
Order requires work. Heck, I look at my desk and see papers, books, a little bust of Socrates and a solar cell powered Einstein with a moveable hand pointing a finger to his head as if to say, “Think.” Keeping my desk in order is a task, and it requires thinking—thank you, Albert. Entropy takes over the moment I ease up.
I think most people understand that order requires effort. If there is a force of disorder, it’s always at work, like some wind that blows through an open window to scatter papers carelessly piled on a desk. And that’s what we see in 2020: Forces of disorder like an indifferent virus and groups of anarchic rioters with no planned end-order, as evidenced by the CHAZ in Seattle, where there were unchecked thefts, injuries, and even two killings within the “ideal” utopia sans order-keeping police.
Inside the dodecahedron, there’s an array of disarray. And it’s not just the social dishevelment that disrupts order with anarchy; nature, too, disorders and disrupts through processes inimical to human harmony, e.g., forest fires, earthquakes, storms.
Life inside the dodecahedron isn’t easy because however the cosmos obtained its fundamental order—through the actions of a Creator or through fundamental laws arising from Chaos—it requires maintenance energy.
*The Timaeus.
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