Chapter 4/5

The Unity of Opposites

Heraclitus stressed the unity of opposites. He believed that contradiction is the source of everything. Only as both sides struggle with and against each other is development possible. Thus, opposites effect a unity. They become parts of a new order that has resulted from their conflict. In traditional logic, contradictories cannot both be true, but in actuality the tension between them is the driving force of life, expanding and enriching even as they are constantly changing: male and female, night and day, work and play, nature and technology, emotion and reason,. . . .

Heraclitus is most famously known as the ancient who claimed we can’t step twice into the same river. The river flows constantly. The river we step into the second time is not precisely the same as it was when we took that first step. The current changes continually. The chemical makeup of the water varies slightly each time we dip into it. Everything about it is in flux. In fact, that is a core idea of Heraclitus: everything is in flux, everything flows, nothing remains the same. The only thing permanent is change.

Moreover, when we step into the river the second time, we are no longer the same person who took that first step. We now have experienced the river as we had not before our first step. We, like the river, are constantly in flux. When I was a boy setting trotlines in the Chikaskia river in northern Oklahoma, it seemed to me that it was always the same river, the Chikaskia. Much in life does seem to be constant. Much appears unchanging, but Heraclitus is the apostle of change. Everything changes constantly, even if infinitesimally.

Thus, we must always take into account that things might differ from what experience tells us. We must learn to look for what the eye of habit, the mind of habit, neither sees nor thinks. Heraclitus bids us, like the highway sign at the railroad tracks, to Stop, Look, and Listen. We must look both directions–and also up and down–before proceeding with life. We must make DIALECTICal thinking our new eye and mind of habit.