What is Heraclitus' fire theory?

Generally speaking, Heraclitus is regarded as a thinker who advocates absolute change and heterogeneity. This impression is not only deepened and proved by the aphorisms that "everything flows, nothing is eternal" and "one cannot step into the same river twice", but also by the so-called Heraclitus school in the middle of the 5th century BC, such as Kratylos's philosophical activities and remarks, and the so-called Heraclitus thought introduced, discussed and criticized by Plato and Aristotle. For example, Kratylos once advocated an extreme relativism. So that people can't even step into the same river once, because everything is changing, dissipating and passing away quickly. Probably influenced by Heraclitus' popular speech, whether Plato pointed the finger at Heraclitus' thought with ridicule or Aristotle made a seemingly serious analysis of Heraclitus' thought according to the law of logical contradiction, without exception, Heraclitus was regarded as an advocate of extreme relativism and rheology. It is all this that makes Heraclitus become the characteristic of all philosophy in the eyes of later people by describing a constantly changing picture of the universe and emphasizing dynamic change and life and death.

However, this is a common misunderstanding. This misunderstanding comes from the fact that later generations lost Heraclitus' unique vision of observing things. I think it is this unique vision that makes Heraclitus not only observe these changes, but also grasp the more subtle, inner and profound things contained in the changes when he is immersed in the endless flow, changes, disputes and oppositions in the life world, and talk about it repeatedly as something fundamentally important. But later people got out of this field of vision, so they could only understand Heraclitus externally and superficially. For example, like the Stoic school, we should understand Heraclitus' philosophy from a changing view of the universe or natural philosophy and regard it as our own ideological resources.

Of course, for Heraclitus, the world is in a state of change, dispute and opposition, which is beyond doubt, but this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is what exists in the change, controversy and opposition of the world and drives it. What is this? We say that this is just the "logos" creatively put forward by Heraclitus. Heraclitus once gave it different names in different places, such as "One", "God", "Soul" and "Wisdom". It is precisely because what is important to Heraclitus is not change, but something more subtle in change. Therefore, in the face of a learned man who is famous for his diverse knowledge, Heraclitus said such a thought-provoking sentence: "erudition does not teach people to have brains; Because (otherwise) it has taught hesiod and Pythagoras, as well as Xeno Finney and Hecatai. " (Part 40) This sentence is very typical. This is enough to show that for Heraclitus, grasping more is not wisdom, but something more important is in it. Only by grasping this point can a scholar have a brain, or rather, he has a brain. Similarly, in another place, Heraclitus said, "If you listen to logos instead of me, you will agree that everything is one. This is wisdom. "