Heraclitus: Exaggeration of Becoming

Heraclitus taught that everything is in a state of flux or constant change: panta rhei. Permanent, immutable substance or Being does not exist, for ultimate reality is always developing or changing. All change means that things are always changing into their opposites, in the process of strife.

• It is impossible to step into the same river twice.
• The world is both this and that, like the bent bow and its string.
• Things do not exist as ready-made objects.
• We cannot talk about things truly because our words must have referents, and though our words are fixed, the referents are always transitory.

Because of this last conclusion, Heraclitus' philosophy could not lead to a science based on describing the world in fixed words or mathematical forms. It led, like the view of Parmenides but for entirely different reasons, to pessimism regarding true knowledge of nature.

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