Heraclitus

Meaning

Heraclitus is named in II.1.3 beside other ancient accounts of the world's beginning. He is said to call the receptive water sea. This naming contributes to the author’s argument that moisture cannot simply be excluded from the fire that produces a generative vapour. Thales' water and Zeno's transitions are neighbouring but distinct formulations.

The passage should not be reduced to the familiar summary that Heraclitus taught fire, nor should the locally attributed sea be silently replaced by that summary. What matters here is how the named authority is made to serve the author's answer to a specific objection. The lexicon preserves the attribution as transmitted without certifying its source or converting it into a modern cosmology.