ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Heraclitus the paradoxographer

Heraclitus was a man who lived a very long time ago and he was very interested in telling stories. Sometimes the stories he told seemed to have two parts that didn't make any sense together. That's why they call him a "paradoxographer", because he wrote down a lot of these stories that didn't seem to fit together at first.

One of the stories Heraclitus told was about a river. He said that you can never step in the same river twice. At first, this might not make sense to you because you might think that if you go to a river again, it's the same river. But Heraclitus meant that even though the river might look the same, the water is always moving and changing. If you step in it one time and then come back later, the water will have moved and it won't be the same as the first time.

Another story Heraclitus told was about a bow and an arrow. He said that the name of the bow stays the same, even though the wood it's made from is always changing. And he said that the name of the arrow changes, even though it stays the same piece of wood. This might sound confusing, but what Heraclitus meant was that things are always changing, even if they look the same on the outside. The bow might be made from different trees over time, but we still call it the same thing. The arrow might stay the same piece of wood, but it's not the same one we shot before.

Overall, Heraclitus was a very wise man who liked to tell stories that made us think. Even though they might seem confusing at first, if we take the time to understand them, they can help us see the world in a different way.