Herakleitos.

  • Ranade, R. D. (Ramchandra Dattatraya)
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Herakleitos. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Herakleitos, Parmenides, and Change* same and not the same, and who suppose that all things follow u back-turning course'ttxvt&v 7pottos eern iceXevQos. Here we may notice that Parmenides is using the very word, which, as we shall see later on, Herakleitos had used before him—7r*W/>o7ro<?— which makes it unmistakably clear that Herakleitos preceded Parmenides, and that, in spite of Zeller, Herakleitos’ doctrine was definitely known to Parmenides, And if it is clear that Herak* leites preceded Parmenides, it is also clear that the doctrine, of becoming preceded the doctrine of being, and Hegel’s contention that the logical category of becoming must follow that ol being is not historically justified. And this becomes an aspersion on one of Hegel’s favourite ideas that the logical order of development corresponds to the historical, and that the categories of the Understanding are at the same time the categories of the Cosmos. One of the central points in the philosophy of Herakleitos is his idea of perpetual change, of a con¬ tinuous flux* I his was expressed by Plato and Aristole in the celebrated The idea of perpetual change. expression tt*vt<*, pe?—- all things flow. Herakleitos himself ne\@* used these words; but the expression summed up, according to Plato and Aristotle, the essential teaching of Herakleitos. Herakleitos however says himself that the Sun that rises up every morning is new every day; veos eft h^PV ^era“ kleitos also expressed his favourite idea of incessant change in that oft-quoted sentence of his : you cannot step twice into the same waters, for “other and yet other waters are ever flowing on”: eTepx yo\p icfi erep*. e7ripp'esi vSo<to<* Ihis doctrine of the Master that it is impossible for us to step into the same rivers twice had its nemesis in the teaching of one of his disciples who held that it is impossible for us to step into the water even once, for as soon as we are placing our foot in it, the water has already run off. Then, again, Epicharmos made fun of Herakleitos’ doctrine by putting the doctrine of perpetual flux in the mouth of a debtor. Why should the debtor pay his debts at all, seeing that the man who borrowed is not tne same as the man who was going to pay ? Anyhow, irrespective of such extravagances to which the doctrine was carried, we may say that Herakleitos broached for the hist time an important scientific truth that nothing in this world is absolutely stationary, but that all things are per¬ petually changing, and that it is not the static aspect of things but the dynamic aspect that matters for science*