  At the conclusion of Parmenides’ criticism of Socrates’ suggestion that forms might be thoughts, Socrates tries a completely different tack: he suggests that forms are patterns set in nature (paradeigmata) and that partaking of a form amounts to being like it (call the combination of these claims “Paradigmatism”). Paradigmatism is incompatible both with the proposal that forms are thoughts and with the Pie Model conception of partaking. The idea that forms are patterns that serve as models for their participants is not new, for it appears in various places in the dialogues of Plato’s middle period (see Republic 472b7–c7, 510a ff., 597a4–5, 596b6–8—and also Timaeus 29c1–2, 48e5–49a1, 50c4–6).