This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Heraclitus of Ephesus taught that all things are in constant flux, a documented doctrine distinct from a philosophy holding that the world's basic furniture stays fixed while only its surface appearances change. He held that stable seeming entities persist only through continuous change, a documented account of apparent permanence distinct from one that treats a lasting thing as genuinely unmoving beneath its surface.
He taught further that apparent opposites are unified through transformation over time, a documented doctrine distinct from a philosophy that keeps opposites permanently separate from one another, and he held this whole process to be governed by a rational cosmic principle he called the logos, a documented ordering principle distinct from a flux left random and without any underlying structure. Fire served as his image for this perpetual transformation, a documented figure distinct from an account illustrated instead by water, earth or some other fixed element.
That a philosopher who taught the world is nothing but ceaseless change also insisted that same change is governed throughout by a single rational logos, rather than left as flux without order, marks Heraclitus's surviving teaching as a documented case where instability and law are asserted together as one and the same account of how the world actually is.