 Nature and natural things are not among the objects that concern Plato in his earlier and middle philosophical investigations. Thus, in the Republic, he dismisses the study of the visible heaven from the curriculum of higher learning along with audible music. But such generalizations about Plato’s intentions may be misleading. What he denigrates is not the study of the heavenly order as such, nor that of harmonics; it is rather the extent to which we must necessarily rely on our eyes and ears in those concerns. Students of philosophy are, rather, encouraged to work out the true intelligible order underlying the visible heaven and audible music. Not only that: The ascent out of the Cave includes recognition of objects outside, especially “the things in the sky” (R. 516a–b). If Plato is critical of natural science, it is because of its empirical approach. This echoes the Phaedo’s complaint that one ruins one’s eyes by looking directly at things, most of all at the sun (Phdo. 99d–e). Nevertheless, Plato already indicates in his critique of Anaxagoras that comprehension of the workings of the order of nature would be highly desirable, as long as it contained an explanation of the rationale of that order (98a): “I was ready to find out about the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, about their relative speed, their turnings and whatever happens to them, how it is best that each should be acted upon.” But Anaxagoras has not fulfilled his promise to explain how mind is the cause of all things by showing (99c): “that the truly good and binding ties and holds everything together”, i.e. through a teleological rather than a mechanical explanation of the cosmic order. Plato himself does not pursue this idea in the rest of the Phaedo, but his elaborate ‘geographical’ depiction of the under-, middle-, and upper world in the final myth can be read as a model of such an explanation in mythological garb. The same can be claimed for the description of the heavenly order and the structure of the ‘spindle of necessity’ in the myth of Er at the end of the Republic (R. 616b–617d).