Heraclitus

philosophy

light bulb joke

famous last word

(530-470 B.C.) believed all things forever flow and change. Even in the stillest matter there is unseen flux and movement.

Heraclitus (530-470 b. a), who left wealth and its cares to live a life of poverty and study in the shade of the temple porticoes at Ephesus, turned science from astronomy to earth-lier concerns. All things forever flow and change, he said; even in the stillest matter there is unseen flux and movement. Cosmic history runs in repetitious cycles, each beginning and ending in fire (here is one source of the Stoic and Christian doctrine of last judgment and hell). "Through strife," says Heraclitus, "all things arise and pass away. . . . War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves, and some free." Where there is no strife there is decay: "the mixture which is not shaken decomposes." In this flux of change and struggle and selection, only one thing ifi constant, and that is law. "This order, the same for all things, no one of gods or men has made; but it always was, and is, and shall be."

Heraclitus, n.All

Heraclitus