Heraclitus, like Thales, was a solitary thinker known for his theory of the ‘unity of opposites. Though he was primarily concerned with explanations of the world around he also advocated for concepts like social harmony. Most of his works (which failed to survive to this day as writings) show his contempt for how humans failed to comprehend the logos – reason, the universal principle through which all things are interrelated and all-natural events occur, and thus lived like dreamers with a false view of the world.
He claims that the significant manifestation of logos is the underlying connection between opposites. For example, health and disease define each other; good and evil and other opposites are similarly related. In addition, he also illustrated how the same thing can be perceived in a varied yet opposite sense – the sea is both fatal (for human beings) and a source of life (for fishes). His understanding of the relation of opposites to each other enabled him to overcome the divergent nature of the world, and he insisted that the world exists as a coherent system: between all things there is a hidden connection so that those that are apparently tending apart are actually being brought together.
According to later great minds that followed – Plato and Aristotle – Heraclitus held extreme views that led to logical incoherence. For he held that everything is constantly changing and opposite things are identical so that everything is and is not at the same time. To put it simply, universal flux and the identity of opposites entail a denial of the law of non-contradiction.
