More Cracking Conclusions!

More cracking conclusions from Heraclitus and his ancient acquaintances!

Choose one of these for a philosophy group or just to chew over on your own!

I'll tell you my favourite at the end.

Much learning does not teach one to have intelligence.

(Heraclitus)

I've always thought schools were a bit overrated.

It is easier to guard against an enemy than a friend.

(Alcmaeon of Croton)

Hmmm...I happen to trust my friends. Yours sound a bit risky Alcmaeon.

The body is earth but the mind is fire.

(Epicharmus of Syracuse)

That famous French philosopher Descartes thought he'd invented the mind-body problem - but no - Epicharmus, you got there first. So are the mind and the body really two different things...?

The best men choose one thing rather than all else: everlasting fame. The majority are satisfied, like well fed cattle.

(Heraclitus)

So it's OK to want to be famous after all? But famous for what?

All things that come into being and grow are earth and water.

(Xenophanes)

Still looking for that elusive 'substance of which all things are made' I see.

In the same river we both step and we do not step, we are and we are not.

(Heraclitus)

You were thinking that everything changes all the time, that nothing stays the same even for a second...even the water in a river is constantly changing, so you can't step into the same river twice. Things only seem to look the same. Now science seems to be backing you up Heraclitus!

And as for certain truth, no man has seen it.

(Heraclitus)

Well, that could be true...

And what on earth gave Anaximander of Miletus this idea?

The earth is like a stone column!

So now we come to my own favourite:

The fairest universe is but a dust-heap piled up at random!

(Heraclitus)

Good to repeat this to yourself on a bad day. Could the universe really be a random pile of dust? Perhaps Heraclitus should have been having a duvet day when he wrote that.

But wait a minute - he says 'the fairest universe'. Did he think there's more than one universe then? Now that's interesting. And we thought multiverse theory was modern!

All of these early philosophers lived between about 580BC and 500BC. These are just fragments from their writings. Even so, we see the seeds of later philosophy: the search for basic substances, the problem of change, the apparent distinction between mind and body, the idea of truth, the difference between knowledge and wisdom, order and disorder in the universe, and ethics - how to be good, or happy.