Heraclitus
(born between 544 and 541 B.C. in Ephesus / died in 480 B.C. according to
Aristotle)
Heraclitus was a philosopher from ancient Greece. We should call him a pre-
Socratic, to the extent that since Socrates, philosophy became a discipline that
focuses on fundamental human problems (morality, metaphysics, politics) which
excludes the visual world and therefore science. Heraclitus is therefore a
phusikoi, a nature thinker. At the time, rational thought wasn’t divided in the two
branches that we know now (philosophy and science). Heraclitus, named the
obscure, wrote aphorisms. They are short enigmatic sentences. From his ideas,
we accepted a first visible principle (fire) and a first intelligible principle (the
opposition of opposites). For example, “you cannot not bathe twice in the same
river” signifies its principle: it is never the same river and yet it is always the
same. Everything has opposites and their never-ending struggle would be a
guarantee for unity and for the becoming of all things.