“The Pythagoreans were mystics, and believed that the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, and icosahedron respectively underlay the structure of the four elements of Greek science: fire, earth, air, and water. The dodecahedron they identified with the universe as a whole. Plato was quite taken by all this and spent some time in his dialogue Timaeus (named after the Pythagorean who is the chief interlocutor) discussing the connection between the five regular polyhedra and the structure of the universe. For this reason the regular polyhedra came to be known as the “platonic solids”.”