Commentary on Plato's Timaeus

...manifested by art; in these matters especially, Plato shares [views] with his own individual natural philosophers. Natural philosophers original: "physiologos" — those who study the "physis" (nature) of the world; in this context, it refers to the Pre-Socratic thinkers who preceded Plato. Regarding these original: "teleytaia" last and extreme parts of natural things, those [earlier thinkers] spent their time; leaving aside the whole Mind and the orders of the cosmic beings; seeing as they looked only at matter, and dismissed the unseen and all-working causes.

But it seems to me that even the marvelous Aristotle, having emulated Plato's teaching to the best of his power, in his treatise on nature regarding the wholeness of the etheric natures, sees the things common to all natural things in these: form and substrate; and from where the principle of motion begins; and motion; and time; and place—which indeed Plato also handed down in his traditions: both extension and time—being an image of eternity, and co-existing with the body—and the various types of motion.

And the specific bodies of natural things distinguished in the heavens: the treatises of these things pertaining to the heavens are in harmony with Plato. Insofar as the heaven is composed to be near to the incorporeal essence; and he honors it, whether he calls it a "fifth element" original: "pempton stoicheion" — often called the "Quintessence" (literally 'fifth essence'), the celestial substance that Aristotle argued was distinct from the four earthly elements (earth, air, fire, water). or a "fifth world."

I have taken the fifth as Plato called it; because it shares in the composition with the Creator. This is wonderful to me, that Plato contemplated both their essences and their powers with much accuracy; and indeed their harmony and their shapes, as if original: "ton" correctly preserved.

Regarding these very things about the middle parts: those that follow pertaining to changes, of which Plato handed down the principles, while Aristotle extended the teaching beyond original: "tou" what was necessary. And these things, concerning the theory of the generation of animals—which Plato passed over, for he sought to go through every cause, both the material and the auxiliary causes; but all these things Aristotle...