Talk:Heraclitus

Reference for cosmos is missing

The paragraph under fire states that

"This quotation is the earliest use of kosmos in any extant Greek text.[5]", but there is no quotation metioning cosmos.

Has that been accidentally deleted and the reference stayed?

Hskoppek (talk) 17:36, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm removing it, looks like kosmos is in Homer, so even if its used in a different sense than Heraclitus uses it the statement just isn't true. - car chasm (talk) 03:49, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Removing Mass Amounts of Original Research

After reading this article and a couple of the sources it cites I've realized almost all of the content here is based on WP:SYNTH and other WP:NOR violations. I'm removing anything that I can't verify as I cross-check content with the secondary sources that are cited. I hope this isn't controversial, but given that Heraclitus wrote in Ionic Greek, and there's a lot of debate among classical scholars about what any of his quotations mean, it's really not possible to make conclusions about Heraclitus based on an english translation of the fragments, without citations from scholarly sources. I'm assuming that any existing attempts to do so are probably not going to be verified by any reliable sources. I also knocked the assessment down to Start-class as most of the cited portions of the article are really only held together by some quotes of a source that's over a hundred years old. - car chasm (talk) 22:11, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

For ancient subjects like this, much of what's worth citing is extremely old, and many things are considered long-settled. In such cases articles do not benefit from efforts to substitute newer sources.Teishin (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry but this is just untrue - most pre-socratic philosophers have been radically re-evaluated in the past 100 years and nothing in this field is considered "long-settled" whatsoever. There are multiple scholars who can be cited such as Martin Litchfield West who have covered interpretations of Heraclitus and other pre-socratic philosophers in detail. Why are you making the assumption that the field has not changed? - car chasm (talk) 17:18, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Carchasm Sure, there are some new interpretations, but in many cases those have not overturned older interpretations. They're just alternative interpretations. Why are you projecting onto me an assumption that the field is unchanging and then proclaiming that I'm saying things that are "just untrue"? Teishin (talk) 12:46, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Teishin: - You said many things are considered long-settled - and that's not true at all. Ideas like "Heraclitus' concept of logos" or the idea that he thought the arche was fire are generally not taken seriously by scholars today. The new interpretations often do overturn the old interpretations, especially as we learn more about how certain words were used in Ancient Greek (compare LSJ to Middle Liddell). The old interpretations probably do still merit some inclusion, probably in a criticism/influence section, but they should not be referenced as if they are reliable academic sources. The idea that later ancient commentators had an accurate reading of Heraclitus is basically discredited and certainly no longer assumed. Citing Burnet or Zeller, for example, is probably iffy: if Burnet is analyzed by later secondary sources like West or Kahn, or even better by something like the Oxford/Cambridge handbooks then he should be cited alongside them, but it would be wrong to assume that anything he interpreted was automatically correct. That assumption itself needs to be supported by actually reliable citations.

In academic research it also isn't valid to say anything is "just an alternative interpretation" - there's a misconception often that because humanities and social sciences deal with less objective criteria, that every interpretation is good as every other. This is not the case generally, and it's certainly not the case on wikipedia: WP:V and WP:NOR are fairly clear on this. - car chasm (talk) 16:45, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Impermanence

So, Carchasm, why don't you think that it isn't WP:OBV that the Heraclitean concepts of panta rei and becoming refer to the concept known as impermanence? And if so, why are you not objecting to how this is treated at more length in our article at Impermanence#Western_philosophy? Teishin (talk) 14:36, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I am objecting to how that other article treats things - I tagged it for that reason (though I wouldn't need to, necessarily). In philosophy, the fact that two words appear to be synonyms in normal English does not imply that they are the same concept: Being and Essence, for example are often used interchangeably in colloquial english, but I hope we already agree that they are very different philosophical concepts. With Heraclitus especially, the assumption that a specific philosophical concept from Eastern philosophy is the same thing is an even worse assumption to make - considering he lived in the Persian empire, and many of his ideas have a remarkable resemblance to both the early Upanishads and Zoroastrianism, which were probably from around the same time. There are whole books dedicated to the subject and debating which direction the influence went, if both were influenced by a common ancestor, etc. - one book that I happen to own is "Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient" which generally takes the common ancestor view. But you can't just assume that the similarity or apparent resemblance means they are the same - different views, even if they start from the same initial position, often develop over time into distinctly different philosophical viewpoints. I would recommend removing the information about Heraclitus from the article on impermanence and making that article focused on Buddhism. Both articles should probably be linked to each other in a "See also" section, or the potential chains of influence should be discussed (with citations) in the main bodies of the respective articles.

But saying Heraclitus' philosophy of becoming/flux/panta rhei is "the same" as how a Buddhist thinks of Impermanence is just plain wrong. - car chasm (talk) 16:28, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Carchasm, I would appreciate if you would avoid ascribing to me positions that I do not take and then making a spectacle of declaring those positions "just plain wrong." I never said Heraclitus' philosophy of becoming/flux/panta rhei is "the same" as how a Buddhist thinks of Impermanence. It appears that you are taking the position that anicca and the term commonly used to translate that term into English, "impermanence," are perfectly and exclusively equated with each other and that the English term now excludes all other conceptions of impermanence. As for connecting Heraclitian thought with Eastern thought, regardless of how this happened, there would seem to be no reason to insist here on some directionality nor reason to insist general concepts require siloing by culture. We don't carve up God that way. Why should this topic be uniquely different from God? BTW, "Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient" is a half-century old. Based on the standards you say you have about age of sources, this would seem not to meet your own standards. Teishin (talk) 17:49, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Teishin: West's book is still heavily cited, and was republished in a second edition in 2002, so I would consider it a reliable source. But regardless, I used it as an example here of why you need to support this assertion and cannot claim "blue sky." I also have no idea what "anicca" even is - but that's irrelevant: wikipedia is not a dictionary and so the fact that Heraclitus' philosophy is similar to the common word "Impermenance" does not mean that those two words refer to the same idea. God is actually split up into several pages and there's a whole field of study on comparative religion that deals with whether conceptions of God are the same. There's been so much discussion about that academically that God needs several subpages even to conclude that conceptions of God aren't necessarily the same. That's very different from a single editor deciding that two words that are similar enough that the underlying concepts and philosophical principles are automatically the same.

As with everything else, I have no actual strong opinion here on what is true one way or another and no interest in discussing that. It might be the case that there's a whole academic book full of review articles on the mutual influences of Buddhism, Hinduis, and Zoroastrianism on Heraclitus that you can add to both articles - if you cite it, I sure won't fight you on that, and would actually like to read that. I care exclusively about what can be verified in reliable academic sources, and what assumptions are or are not valid to make in philosophy without citations. - car chasm (talk) 18:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

So, you "have no idea what 'anicca' is." This would appear to be your basis for being unable to understand WP:BLUESKY. Sorry, but this is not grounds for overturning what is here and demanding other editors take on the burden of proof against what you've overturned.

Yup, there's lots of research on mutual influences among the cultures of antiquity. As I said before, this is not a justification for siloing. It's beside the point.

And as your accusation "That's very different from a single editor deciding that two words that are similar enough that the underlying concepts and philosophical principles are automatically the same" I must point out that the issue here is not that, but that a single editor - who has no idea of what 'anicca' is - has decided that whatever 'anicca' is, it is so utterly dissimilar to the underlying concepts and philosophical principles of some other philosophies that these concepts and principles do not have a sufficient family resemblance such that they can be discussed as parts of an overall general topic as has been Wikipedia's long-standing treatment. Teishin (talk) 18:47, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Please read the rest of my prior reply @Teishin: - if you support these claims with reliable sources, i have no objection to them whatsoever. Everything in an infobox should be supported by a piece of information with citation in the main body. If you want to start a section on influences for Heraclitus and add a bit about this, and cite some academic sources supporting this conclusion - I encourage you to do so. Until that is written though, impermanence should not be linked in the infobox. As someone with no idea what "anicca" is, like most hypothetical readers of this page, I need to be able to verify claims made in this article. The burden of proof belongs to someone adding material without citation - this is a core wikipedia content policy. - car chasm (talk) 19:12, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

... inappropriate criticism

criticism secrion contains only praise 109.245.227.67 (talk) 07:33, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

This was a fair point, I changed it to legacy :). - car chasm (talk) 16:05, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Re:Zoroastrianism

@LouisAragon: - I reverted your additions from Encyclopedia Iranica - reading the article, it only mentions that Heraclitus may have mentioned the Magi in one of his fragments, not that he was traditionally considered the first to have written on them. From other sources I've read on Heraclitus (such as Kahn 1979 cited in the article), the ascription of this fragment is doubted not due to forgery but because it's not clear where the quotation of Heraclitus begins - Fragment 14 is ambiguous in the original Greek, and it might be the author quoting Heraclitus who is mentioning Dionysians and Magians and then immediately quoting Heraclitus words as "The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries." So we can't draw any conclusions of our own from that that diverge from the reliable sources.

Zoroastrian influences on Heraclitus are certainly being investigated by scholars due to the similarities with Fire (such as by West 1971 cited in the article), but we can't really conclude that Zoroastrianism was invented or influenced by Heraclitus from that per the sources. I had added a bit to the wikipedia article in the section on cosmology citing West on it if you want to take a look at it. But as the Iranica article notes, beyond some ascriptions of Heraclitus as a son of an aristocratic family in Ephesus, Further biographical details are derived from traditions of questionable historicity. Let me know if you have any concerns with that! - car chasm (talk) 06:44, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

@Carchasm:

• "...it only mentions that Heraclitus may have mentioned the Magi in one of his fragments, not that he was traditionally considered the first to have written on them."

The very first sentence of the Iranica article says this:[1] "HERACLEITUS OF EPHESUS, Greek philosopher traditionally credited as the first to have written on the magi.

• "From other sources I've read on Heraclitus (such as Kahn 1979 cited in the article), the ascription of this fragment is doubted not due to forgery but because it's not clear where the quotation of Heraclitus begins"

Kahn is a 1979 source. The Iranica entry, written by Classicist and Iranologist Josef Wiesehöfer, is from 2003. Not sure why you think it would be prudent to remove Wiesehofer in its entirety just because it doesn't fully overlap with the 1979 Kahn source? Unless you can demonstrate that Wiesehofer is WP:FRINGE, they can perfectly co-exist in this article.

• "So we can't draw any conclusions"

I didn't draw any conclusions. I fully adhered to the Iranica source and even used quotes. Please don't insinuate as if I tried to; it is a violation of WP:ASPERSIONS.

I would like to see sound policy-based arguments that would vet against the inclusion of Wiesehöfer. Thanks, - LouisAragon (talk) 12:55, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Well no, I don't think Weisehofer is WP:FRINGE at all, but I've read the same sources he's cited (Kahn and West), which I cited for you above. Weisehofer isn't independent of those sources - he's also citing them as his main sources, as you can see at the bottom of the Iranica page. Saying that Heraclitus is a "source of the ancient Iranian religion" isn't accurate and is potentially misleading, as there is a only single mention of the word "Magians" in a paragraph of another ancient writer's work. The quote I showed you is the same one that Weisehofer is citing. I believe that you may have inadvertently performed WP:SYNTH here, I'm not accusing you of doing anything on purpose.

But additionally, Weisehofer is not really a WP:RS here - he's a tertiary source who is writing an encyclopedia article. Like I said above, I've read the books he's citing and cited them in the article, and it's more complicated than you presented it in your edit. - car chasm (talk) 14:41, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, "traditionally credited as the first to have written on the magi" may be something relevant to an article in an encyclopedia on Iran, so I'm not really faulting Wiesehofer here for oversimplifying a complicated issue - respected scholars do that all the time, especially in works intended for a more general audience. But the actual questions of influence are much more complicated - West spends a whole chapter and part of another of "Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient" on this issue. This article, which is much longer than Weisehofer's but is still lacking quite a lot of content, can afford the space to explain the issue more thoroughly, rather than saying Among other things, the role he assigns to fire as the archetype of constant flux has led scholars to seek Iranian roots in Heracleitian thought. In frag. 14, Magi are mentioned together with various people who engage in Bacchanal rituals; the authenticity of this fragment is, however, debated. we can actually discuss the potential Iranian roots in Heraclitean thought. - car chasm (talk) 14:56, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

I've added a bit more from West in the cosmology section to describe the influences of fire from Zoroastrianism - I hope you see what I'm talking about if I haven't explained it well on this talk page but my objection to the addition is much more about the fact that this is a really complex subject and that it's easy to draw conclusions that aren't necessarily supported by the evidence from an abridgement or summary of the issue, because all the surviving texts are potentially influenced by each other. West develops a fairly neutral theory of mutual influence across cultures from the various scholarly sources he cites on Zoroastrian, Vedic, Greek, and Egyptian cosmologies, but that requires a much longer exposition than Weisehofer - a shorter description of influence is much more likely to be misleading. - car chasm (talk) 15:43, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

@Carchasm: I can agree with this. Thanks for expanding the article. - LouisAragon (talk) 14:56, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Image tracked down

I tracked down the source of one previous image of Heraclitus, here. Were these based on actual sculptures in the Vatican or some place, or imagined? Perhaps a silly question, but his depiction of Thales seems so standard it seems like there is a real herm out there to be ignored. Cake (talk) 08:51, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

could you clarify a bit what you're suggesting here? the talk page is for the article itself, but im struggling to find any specific changes to the article you're proposing. - car chasm (talk) 15:27, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

The linked image (or another version of it, this one) was previously in the article, and was presumably removed due to it being unsourced, and/or not from antiquity. I've found the source, and it leaves me wondering if there is a bust of Heraclitus somewhere which the image reproduces. If it's a drawing from a bust in the Vatican (such as we have of Bias of Priene) or similar, then it seems to me a good image for the article. If it's completely from the artist's imagination, I can understand prefering a different one. Cake (talk) 19:40, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I agree. If we can find any proof that it's not from the artist's imagination, and it's actually based on a bust from antiquity, then that picture (or a picture of the bust itself...) would be fine. If we can't find anything sourcing it though I think we should keep the current picture. - car chasm (talk) 23:59, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

When I tried to improve upon the article that was previously mostly Greek quotes to work with - which you further improved upon - I had searched far and wide for a sculpture from antiquity somewhere. It's too long ago for me to recall with certainty, but I think the one being used wasn't confidently identified as Heraclitus. I think it was also identified as Democritus or somebody. It's also possible it's fine and I am confusing it with another one. Regardless, the above drawing was the best I found. Sometimes the image is the same but has him crying, which seems to suggest the imagined "weeping philosopher", sometimes it seems not to. Further, the one on commons is on a sheet of several busts, some of which are copied from sculptures like Seneca is Pseudo-Seneca, and some other like Thales which seem so often reproduced for "how he looked" that it must come from some sculpture somewhere, yet I've never seen it. Your parenthetical note is what I am hoping for. That this rambling screed can lead to finding a marble or bronze bust or sculpture. I feel I should expect one somewhere. Cake (talk) 02:29, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

And after checking, yes, the current profile pic is the one also identified as Democritus, and has no reason I've found for why it's identified as Heraclitus. In fact I found "One need only list the suggested identifications for a portrait from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum - Demokritos, Solon, Aristotle, Philopoemen, Thales - to see that such a project is fragile at best". Pseudo-Seneca also from the Villa of the Papyri. Cake (talk) 03:14, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, seems like we probably shouldn't use the current picture then, I've just changed it back to the old one. - car chasm (talk) 05:38, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

It stood out from all the seemingly ancient depictions I could find that weren't "Some philosopher of some kind, possibly Heraclitus" or (at least that I could see) working on a theme like Heraclitus-as-crying or Heraclitus-as-cynic. Unless that line on his face is a tear (it seems less prominent in the original). Tried to avoid using some Dutch painting or whatever but of course it is possible one might be forced. To think Bias has a face but Heraclitus doesn't. I'm sure there are many similar cases but that is an odd one. Cake (talk) 06:58, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Here is another one I'd like to know more about. Cake (talk) 08:09, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Here is one source which says there are two busts at least provisionally identified as Heraclitus. Note there's also one of Thales, and those two having busts was my initial suspicion. And no question mark by his name. Cake (talk) 08:14, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

The above is number 2 from the Hall of Philosophers, identified (at least at one point) as Heraclitus. Gotta find 3, which is also him. The one which is used in the article looks an awful lot like Aristophanes, note the headband. It probably used to be identified as Heraclitus, or some such. Cake (talk) 12:21, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I've sort of figured it out. See this picture. The top two left are said to be Heraclitus, labeled as #2 and #3. Next to Socrates who is 4 (that helped). We have 3. We don't have 2. There is one engraving which seems to use 2. Cake (talk) 06:15, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Peirce influenced by Heraclitus?

I don't see any sources which state the influence coming from Heraclitus, but marking it down here in case I do or somebody else does, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce summarized his doctrine of continuity as "Everything swims." Cake (talk) 08:18, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

GOCE copy edit

Some notes:

• In general, the organization should be reworked. The writings section doesn't seem to have a coherent theme, and other sections also discuss his writings. Some of the sections, such as "Time" and "Aristotle" are stubs and can be folded into something else. It's also not clear to me why "Logos" and "Ethos" are under the "Cosmoloy" heading.
• Not all references are formatted using {{cite}} templates.
• Add transliteration markup.
• Attribute philosophical views to particular philosophers. Don't use "some say" (see MOS:WEASEL).
• The first sentence in the section on "The obscure" comes out of nowhere; what is the "forever" being referred to?
• Punctuation goes outside of the quotation mark on Wikipedia (MOS:LQ).
• Be careful with attributing emotions/feelings to Heraclitus (e.g., Heraclitus "liked" or "disliked").
• The paragraph beginning "Several fragments seem to relate to these two concepts" (and the others like it with strings of quotes from Heraclitus) feel like OR. The quotes should be discussed in the context of secondary literature.
• Left some cleanup tags.

voorts (talk/contributions) 02:56, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Derveni papyrus?

the derveni papyrus is mentioned in the article, but we don't discuss it in detail. just making a note here that that's something we might want to expand on, there's certainly WP:RS we can draw on from the past 20 years to do so - car chasm (talk) 16:54, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Almost 😊 136.57.140.205 (talk) 10:32, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

That was definitely me trying to keep a prior editors work rather than knowing what I'm talking about. What more is there to say about the Derveni papyrus other than it contained B3 and B94? Cake (talk) 02:01, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

There's been a fair bit of literature on how other content in the Derveni Papyrus might relate to Heraclitus' thought and the link between Heraclitus and Orphism in later classical philosophy that's implied by the fact that those are the principal sources drawn on by the commentator, for example see:

* Sider, David (1997). Heraclitus in the Derveni Papyrus. pp. 129–148. Retrieved 23 April 2024.

Probably not critical for something like GAN, but it's a more recent area of interest in scholarly work on Heraclitus, and I think it's something we'd want for a comprehensive article. Psychastes (talk) 23:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. The parallels between Pythagoras and Orphism like in Russell's History are already over my head. I probably need to read an Orphism for Dummies at some point. I know they like music, at least. Cake (talk) 01:45, 24 April 2024 (UTC)