display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 12269 | All things are in a state of motion [Heraclitus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All things are in a state of motion. | |
| From: report of Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE]) by Aristotle - Topics 104b22 | |
| A reaction: This seems right, I would say. It seems to make a 'process' the fundamental category of ontology, rather than an 'object'. |
| 420 | The cosmos is eternal not created, and is an ever-living and changing fire [Heraclitus] |
| Full Idea: This cosmos, which is the same for all, was not created by any one of the gods or of mankind, but it was ever and is and shall be ever-living fire, kindled and quenched in measure. | |
| From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B030), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 5.1.103 |
| 5090 | Maybe bodies are designed by accident, and the creatures that don't work are destroyed [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Is it just an accident that teeth and other parts of the body seem to have some purpose, and creatures survive because they happen to be put together in a useful way? Everything else has been destroyed, as Empedocles says of his 'cow with human head'. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], 61) by Aristotle - Physics 198b29 | |
| A reaction: Good grief! Has no one ever noticed that Empedocles proposed the theory of evolution? It isn't quite natural selection, because we aren't told what does the 'destroying', but it is a little flash of genius that was quietly forgotten. |