Philosopher File: Heraclitus

The philosophy of flow and change

Image: Heraclitus by Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629). Public Domain. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Heraclitus’s philosophy was based on the idea that the world is in continual flux. He is famous above all for his mysterious comment that ‘everything flows.’

Life

Perhaps fittingly for a philosopher who saw change as fundamental to the universe, our knowledge about Heraclitus himself is similarly changeable and hard to pin…