Plato in Timaeus says, “If anyone can tell us of a better choice of triangle for the construction of the four bodies, his criticism will be welcome; but for our part we propose to pass over all the rest. . . . It would be too long a story to give the reason, but if anyone can produce a proof that it is not so we will welcome his achievement.”13 I can imagine the reaction today if I supported a new conjecture about matter in a physics article by saying that it would take too long to explain my reasoning, and challenging my colleagues to prove the conjecture is not true.
