Heraclitus: Change is All
c540-475 BC
-540 -475
27.20E36.50N
MISC

WESTERN TURKEY
	Nothing stays the same for very long.
	In brief, that is the philosophy of an early Greek thinker named Heraclitus.
	Very little is known about Heraclitus, except that he was born and lived in Ephesus (in what is now Turkey) of wealthy parents and that he wrote a book called, "On the Universe," of which only 130 fragments remain.
	In it he makes some rather strange speculations on the heavens. The stars, he said, are boats into which glowing evaporations from the earth have gathered. We can see the gleaming cargos most of the time, but sometimes the boats turn away and the shining is shielded from our eyes, resulting in what we would call an eclipse.
	More interesting are his observations of the world around him, which can be broken down into four themes.
	The first of these is that conflict is constant. When things remain the same for a while, he said, it is because opposite forces are balanced, like a bowstring that holds its shape by being pulled by the archer in one direction and by the bow in the other direction. Examples of such opposites are day and night, summer and winter, life and death. He said this harmony is maintained by the goddess Justice and her avenging Furies.
	Second, everything is part of a whole. Everything comes from fire and all things return to fire, he said.
	Third, everything is changing. This is perhaps best summed up in Heraclitus observation that: "You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters forever flow in upon you."
	Fourth, is the idea of contrasts. Heraclitus notes that while gold is valuable to men, donkeys would prefer straw, and while sea water is great for fish, men drown in it, and even though there are wise men, even they are as dumb as apes compared to God.
	Plato, an unsympathetic observer of the Heraclitist philosophy, tells an interesting story of some Heraclitists who seem to have taken the idea of change a bit too far. He said they refused to talk about anything because that would imply the continued existance of the thing under discussion.
	Others have felt that his idea that all is just change seems to make life rather pointless, and have therefore refered to Heraclitus as "The Dark Philosopher."
	Still, Heraclitus' observation that change is fundamental has been picked up repeatedly -- though in different forms -- by philosophers as different as Aristotle and Hegel.