 Plato’s account of the sciences in Book VII of the Republic can be seen as a response to Archytas’ view of the sciences. First Plato identifies a group of five rather than four sciences and decries the neglect of his proposed fifth science, stereometry (solid geometry), with a probable allusion to Archytas (see section 2.1). Plato quotes with approval Archytas’ assertion that “these sciences seem to be akin” (B1), although he applies it just to harmonics and astronomy rather than to Archytas’ quadrivium and does not mention him by name. In the same passage, however, Plato pointedly rejects the Pythagorean attempt to search for numbers in “heard harmonies.” In doing so Plato is disagreeing with Archytas’ attempt to determine the numbers that govern things in the sensible world. For Plato, the value of the sciences is their ability to turn the eye of the soul from the sensible to the intelligible realm. Book VII of the Republic with its elaborate argument for the distinction between the intelligible and sensible realm, between the cave and the intelligible world outside the cave, may be in large part directed at Archytas’ attempt to use mathematics to explain the sensible world. As Aristotle repeatedly emphasizes, the Pythagoreans differed from Plato precisely in their refusal to separate numbers from things (e.g., Metaph. 987b27).