ABSTRACT
Some 3,000 years ago, thinkers referred to as the “pre-Socratic” philosophers speculated, over a number of centuries, about the nature of reality. Their thought traces out the transition from understanding change in a purely mythological sense to the “logos” which became the core of Greek philosophy. Two of these thinkers, Parmenides (c. 450 BC) and Heraclitus (c. 500 BC) still symbolize today what seem to be mutually exclusive perspectives on change. Parmenides held that reality was stable without change, that is, being. Heraclitus argued that reality was all flux and change, that is, becoming. The tension between these two positions has echoed through the ages, and much of the discussion about stability and change in the complexity sciences harks back to it.
