Actually, we don't have to go to Timaeus to find Plato speaking of the natural world. He is almost certainly talking about the planets in this quote:
"‘if someone truly has his mind on things as they really are, he will not have time to look down at the preoccupations of mere mortals and fight with them, filling himself full of malice and ill-will. Instead, as he turns his eyes towards an ordered array of things that forever remain the same, and observes these maintaining their harmony and rationality in everything, and neither behaving unjustly nor being treated unjustly by each other, he will imitate these and model himself after them so far as he can. Or do you think anyone can avoid imitating a thing he spends his time with, and in awe of?’
‘He can’t,’ said Adimantus.
‘So if the philosopher spends his time with the divine and ordered, he’ll achieve such order and divinity as is possible for man'".
Actually, we don't have to go to Timaeus to find Plato speaking of the natural world. He is almost certainly talking about the planets in this quote:
"‘if someone truly has his mind on things as they really are, he will not have time to look down at the preoccupations of mere mortals and fight with them, filling himself full of malice and ill-will. Instead, as he turns his eyes towards an ordered array of things that forever remain the same, and observes these maintaining their harmony and rationality in everything, and neither behaving unjustly nor being treated unjustly by each other, he will imitate these and model himself after them so far as he can. Or do you think anyone can avoid imitating a thing he spends his time with, and in awe of?’
‘He can’t,’ said Adimantus.
‘So if the philosopher spends his time with the divine and ordered, he’ll achieve such order and divinity as is possible for man'".
- Socrates in Plato's Republic, 500b-d