On a visit to the museum in Besançon, a strange object catches my eye. Oddly familiar. I photograph it: a Roman dodecahedron — an object of twelve openwork faces, truly strange, and no one still knows what it was for. Some time later, working on a project, I come across it again inside my 3D software. One of the basic tools. It's called a Platonic solid — Plato for geeks.
Five shapes, five elements
I discover the Platonic solids. The man who pondered the great questions of the human condition answers here with geometry: five shapes that, according to him, compose every form on earth. No more, no less. Four, six, eight, twelve and twenty faces — the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, the icosahedron. To each its element: fire, earth, air, water. And to the dodecahedron — the one from the museum — ether: harmony.
Almost two thousand years, and the same game
It is fascinating. These shapes take me back to childhood: the cubes you try to push through triangles, the Kapla towers… Everything is a building game, more or less simple. It is funny, sometimes, how time compresses: almost two thousand years apart, and we still play with the same objects. I have the feeling that, whatever the age or the era, we have this instinctive ability to solve problems. Sometimes we create them for no reason, sometimes we make them more complex — but every problem, however complex, has its simple solution, as in childhood. Plato summed up the complexity of the living world in five shapes. We ought to remember that in every meeting room.
Adrien
