not at all; no is it fitting for him to go to different places at different

times, but without toil he moves all things by the thought of his

mind."

The criticism of traditional religion is, as Geoffrey Kirk (The Presocratic

Philosophers) points out, clear enough. The gods of Homer are often immoral and, by
implication, because they are gods, they should be moral. Moreover, there is no good
reason to believe that the gods are 'anthropomorphic' at all. Such an criticism goes to
the core of ancient believe systems: if the gods are not anthropomorphic and do not
respond as humans do, then they cannot be manipulated by gifts, prayer and sacrifice.
God(s) must be something quite different in substance and personality from humans,
Heraclitus suggests.

It was also Heraclitus who defined this entity with his term "Logos" or 'rational
principle'. He writes:

"Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to be

uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they
have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos
men are like people of no experience, even when they experience such
words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to
its constitutions and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice
what they do after they wake up just as the forget what the do when
asleep.

Heraclitus is also of great significance for his fragment 218:

**"Heraclitus somewhere says that all things are in process and nothing
stays still, and likening existing things to the stream of a river he says
that you would not step twice into the same river."

In this citation Heraclitus articulates one of the most important problem of philosophy
and of science: As everything is in the process of change, how can one know anything
for certain? The statement is the foundation of 'epistemology', the study of knowledge.
The most recent and significant formulation of the problem is the Heisenberg
Principle (devised by the Nobel prize winning physicist of the 1930s).

Pythagoras and his followers perceived that the ultimate reality (arché) was not
something material, but number (we might translate that to mean that any natural
phenomenon might be described mathematically).
"Ten is the very nature of number. All Greeks and all barbarians alike
count up to ten, and having reached ten, revert again to the unit. And
again,