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[MUSIC]

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Heraclitus was known in
antiquity as the riddler.

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He had a reputation both for
obscurity and profundity.

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The one book he wrote was widely quoted in
antiquity, and from the evidence we have,

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it was full of oracular pronouncement and
deliberate paradox.

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Socrates is reported to have said upon
reading the book, the parts that I

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understood were very impressive, and so
were the parts that I didn't understand.

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So, what was the book about?

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In a word, it is about the LOGOS.

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Now Logos is a term that we've
noted has a range of meanings.

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From the very general sense in which
a LOGOS is a word or anything said,

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to the more restricted sense in which
it's a particular way of using words.

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Specifically, to give an explanation,
or reason, or to figure something out.

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So, let's see where Heraclitus' LOGOS
fits into this range of meanings.

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Not surprisingly, he turns out
to have exploited most of them.

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Let's look at the opening lines
of the book, which is 22B1.

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This LOGOS holds always, but humans
always prove unable to understand it,

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both before hearing it and
when they have first heard it.

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Now, here we might think the LOGOS
is the book of Heraclitus itself.

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And, that the philosopher is making the
perennial complaint of the misunderstood

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artist that his brilliant work is not
appreciated by the general public.

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Now, there is some truth to this,
I think, but as we read on,

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it seems that the Logos can't simply be
the book that Heraclitus has written.

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For although all things come to
be in accordance with this LOGOs,

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humans are like the inexperienced when
they experience such words and deeds as I

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set out, distinguishing each according
to its nature and saying how it is.

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Heraclitus, here,

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distinguishes between

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the words he has written

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down and the LOGOS.

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The LOGOS is not what he says, but

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a principle that governs everything
that comes to be or happens,

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even if people don't understand it
when he tries to explain it to them.

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And that they don't understand is
a constant refrain in the book.

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Our quote from the opening ends by
contrasting Heraclitus' own insight

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with the stupidity of other people who
fail to notice what they do when awake.

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Just as they forget what
they do while asleep.

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Heraclitus regularly appeals to
the distinction between sleeping and

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waking experience to make the point
that those who do not understand

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the Logos are like sleepers who
mistake their dreams for reality.

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So Heraclitus is giving a wake up call,

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inviting us to understand the true
reality behind our experiences.

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That reality is expressed in the LOGOS.

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But what does the LOGOS say?

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Nothing very straightforward, obviously,
or else it wouldn't be so hard for

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us to get.

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The closest thing we have to a clear
statement of the LOGOS is in fragment B50.

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Llisten not to me but

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to the LOGOS; it is wise to
agree that all things are one.

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Now when he says don't listen to me but

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to the LOGOS,
he means look I'm not making this up.

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When he says it is wise to
agree that all things are one,

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he is telling us what the LOGOS says.

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So, the LOGOS is that all things are one.

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But what does that mean,
that there is only one thing?

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How could that be true?

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I'm here, you're here, and
that makes at least two things.

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Or, will Heraclitus roll his
eyes at this objection and

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say that's just the sort of response you'd
get from people who can't tell that they

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are dreaming rather than awake.

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You see inviting us to wake up and realize
that there really is no difference between

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the things that seem pretty obviously
different and distinct to us.

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Well, at least for some things, yes.

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For instance, here's some more quotes.

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The road up and
the road down are the same, hint.

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The track of writing is both straight and
crooked.

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That's one of my favorites.

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The beginning and the end are common
on the circumference of a circle.

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These are just a few of the many
fragments in which Heraclitus proclaims

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what people call the unity of opposites.

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Now we might say, okay,
so what's the big deal?

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The same thing can have opposite
properties depending on your frame of

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reference.

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What's so hard to understand about that?

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But consider another unity that Heraclitus
invokes when he castigates Hesiod as,

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quote, a man who could not recognize
day and night, for they are one.

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What does it mean to say that day and
night are one?

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When it's day here,
it's night in Australia?

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My apologies to anyone who is
taking this course from Australia.

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More likely, he meant that day and night
are different phases of the same thing,

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where that thing is the complex
system comprising the Earth,

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the Sun, and the other celestial bodies.

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Even though night and day are completely
opposite in our experience of them,

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as different as night and
day, as we would say,

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we can understand them as expressions
of a deeper underlying regularity.

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On this way of understanding
Heraclitus' Logos, his point in claiming

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that all things are one is not to
deny that there is multiplicity and

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variety in the world, but rather,

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to insist that there is an underlying
order to that multiplicity and variety.

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This is what is not obvious.

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And what most people,
the sleepers fail to see.

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What the sleepers fail to understand
is a deep truth about the world that

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though at variance with
itself It agrees with itself.

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It is a backwards-turning attunement
like that of the bow and the lyre.

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Now this attunement is what he
calls the unapparent connection

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that he says is stronger
than apparent connection.

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Now connection and attunement
translate the same Greek term here.

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It's harmonia, which is the root,
of course, of our term for

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musical harmony, but
it also means a joining together, as

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when a cabinet maker fits tongue-in-groove
when constructing a piece of furniture.

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The important point here is that
the unity involved in harmonia, and

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hence in the Logos,
is a matter of order and structure.

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But does the world have a LOGOS?

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Now you might ask, what reason
does Heraclitus have for being so

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confident that there is such an underlying
order or Logos to the world?

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We can grant him the order
behind night and day.

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But, why should we suppose that the whole
world follows some underlying order?

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Recall that Heraclitus says
that everything comes to be

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according to the Logos in
the opening lines of the book.

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Why not conclude that the world, or maybe
large pockets of it, are just chaotic?

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That's certainly what our
experience often tells us.

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But, Heraclitus tells us not
to just trust our experience.

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He says, eyes and ears are bad witnesses
to people if they have barbarian souls.

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And the soul, he says, has its own LOGOS.

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In one place he calls it a deep LOGOS.

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In another he calls it
a self-increasing LOGOS.

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Here is where I would want to translate
LOGOS as reason or reasoning.

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When Heraclitus says, I searched myself,
or alternatively, I looked into myself.

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He means he used his critical faculties.

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His power of reasoning.

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But, what chain of reasoning would
support the conclusion that there is

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an underlying unity and
order to the world?

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That's a pretty tall order.

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If Heraclitus produced such an argument,

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he hasn't shared it with us or
no one saw fit to quote it from his book.

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But, even if he doesn't have a proof that
there is an underlying order to things,

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his conviction that there is such an order
isn't idle dogmatism or table thumping.

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For the belief that the world
is ultimately understandable or

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explicable is a presupposition behind the
whole enterprise of scientific inquiry.

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To search for explanations is to try
to uncover hidden connections and

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unifying principles that explain
the variety of phenomena that we observe.

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Heraclitus belief that
the world has a LOGOS

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may simply express his conviction that
the world is ultimately understandable.

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If so, it is a conviction that he shares
with the Melanesian Naturalists, Thales,

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Anaximander, and Anaximenes,
each of whom also insisted on a single

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explanatory principle
of the natural world.

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It is their shared assumption that
the world is ultimately explicable,

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more than their specific
proposals about how to explain it,

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that have earned them a place in
the history of natural science.

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It is also what earns them the title
that Aristotle gives them,

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phusiologoi, which we can now understand
in a slightly different twist,

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as those who believe with Heraclitus, that
there is a LOGOS to the natural world.