Position
Universal Flux
Reality is process: everything flows, and stability is only a pattern in change.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Metaphysics
Overview
On the traditional reading — Plato's, though some scholars think it overstates him — Heraclitus held that all things are like a river in ceaseless motion, so no thing keeps a fixed identity from moment to moment. Yet the fragments equally stress that what we call stable objects are recurring patterns sustained by an underlying rational order, the logos, not sheer chaos.
Position on
Held by traditions
- Heracliteanism
Question scope: Change and Being
Broader position
Incompatible positions
- Eleatic Monism
Question scope: Change and Being
References
- G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1983)
- Heraclitus, DK B12 and B30 (in Kirk, Raven and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed., 1983)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Process Philosophy