Heraclitus Quotes on Nature

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535–475 BC) treats nature (physis) as the underlying logos of perpetual transformation rather than as a stable substrate of unchanging things. The famous river image — you cannot step into the same river twice — and the doctrine of the unity of opposites (the road up and the road down are one and the same) are designed to dislodge the ordinary assumption that the apparent stability of natural objects is fundamental and to recommend instead the recognition of the underlying tension of opposites whose continual interchange constitutes what we call the natural world. Fire — the most plainly transformative element — supplies the cosmological symbol for the principle, and the framework anticipates much of subsequent process philosophy from Hegel through Whitehead and Bergson.