| The Timaeus is a treatise about the nature of the world as a whole and its contents. Plato discusses the things contained in the world by analyzing the constitution of their parts. The ultimate parts of physical things are the four kinds of elemental bodies. The centerpiece, therefore, of Plato's analysis of things in the Timaeus is his discussion of the structure of the elements. The elemental bodies have the shape of four of the five regular geometrical solids and can be broken down into "triangles." Plato's account of the elements states their form and structure but makes no mention of what the "triangles," and therefore the elemental bodies, consist of. Plato discusses this in the preceding passage on the Third Genos.;The interpretation of the Third Genos has been fixed by Aristotle's comments on the passage: it has been interpreted to be matter, space, both, or neither. An examination of these positions yields rather contradictory results: the Third Genos is both an abstract object and some kind of a material "that in which." The dissertation argues that, to begin with, the Third Genos is in fact a "genos" or kind of thing, namely, a kind of subjects; it is derived by a re-analysis of the Second Kind, i.e. physical things. The Timaeus is most concerned with one subject, the subject of elemental genesis. Because of the obscurity of the text and its many interpretations the dissertation examines the entire passage and sets forth the arguments that govern its divagations. On the basis of these findings it is argued that the subject of elemental genesis is not space but rather material of some sort. Plato thinks this material fills the "triangles," which, it is argued, are three-dimensional particles or bits which fit together to form the elemental bodies. The subject of elemental genesis, then, resembles Aristotle's "prime matter" in many respects as being the ultimate constituent of the elements. This interpretation, it is argued, opposes recent interpretations which would appeal to the Third Genos in support of the claim that Plato subscribed to the Bundle Theory of particulars. |
