Heraclitus used the metaphor of a river to illustrate change : "Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers"DK B12, from Arius Didymus, fr. 39.2, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.20.2 and "We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."DK B49a, from Heraclitus Homericus, Homeric Questions 24 However, some classicists and professors of ancient philosophy have disputed which of these fragments can truly be attributed to Heraclitus. Heraclitus's philosophy has been summed up with the adage; "No man ever steps in the same river twice",DK B91, from Plutarch On the E at Delphi 392b although this precise phrasing is not attested in his own language. The idea is referenced twice in Plato's Cratylus;Cratylus 401d.5 and 402a.8; cf. also Cratylus 439d.3. rather than "flow" Plato uses chōrei (; ; "to change place"). According to Plato: "All entities move and nothing remains still" and "Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream".  Simplicius references it thus: "the natural philosophers who follow Heraclitus, keeping in view the perpetual flux of generation and the fact that all corporeal things are coming to be and departing and never really are (as Timaeus said too) claim that all things are always in flux and that you could not step twice in the same river".Barnes (1982), p. 65, and also Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, 1313.11. According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said one cannot step into the same river once. The German classicist and philosopher Karl-Martin Dietz interprets this fragment as an indication by Heraclitus, for the world as a steady constant; "You will not find anything, in which the river remains constant ... Just the fact, that there is a particular river bed, that there is a source and an estuary etc. is something, that stays identical. And this is ... the concept of a river."
Heraclitus used the metaphor of a river : "Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers"DK B12, from Arius Didymus, fr. 39.2, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.20.2 and "We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."DK B49a, from Heraclitus Homericus, Homeric Questions 24 However, some classicists and professors of ancient philosophy have disputed which of these fragments can truly be attributed to Heraclitus. Heraclitus's philosophy has been summed up with the adage; "No man ever steps in the same river twice",DK B91, from Plutarch On the E at Delphi 392b although this precise phrasing is not attested in his own language. The idea is referenced twice in Plato's Cratylus;Cratylus 401d.5 and 402a.8; cf. also Cratylus 439d.3. rather than "flow" Plato uses chōrei (; ; "to change place"). According to Plato: "All entities move and nothing remains still" and "Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream". According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said one cannot step into the same river once. Simplicius references it thus: "the natural philosophers who follow Heraclitus, keeping in view the perpetual flux of generation and the fact that all corporeal things are coming to be and departing and never really are (as Timaeus said too) claim that all things are always in flux and that you could not step twice in the same river".Barnes (1982), p. 65, and also Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, 1313.11. The German classicist and philosopher Karl-Martin Dietz interprets the metaphor as illustrating what is stable, rather than the usual interpretation of illustrating change. "You will not find anything, in which the river remains constant ... Just the fact, that there is a particular river bed, that there is a source and an estuary etc. is something, that stays identical. And this is ... the concept of a river."
D
to illustrate change
A
According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said one cannot step into the same river once.
D
According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said one cannot step into the same river once.
R
this fragment as an indication by Heraclitus, for the world as a steady constant;
the metaphor as illustrating what is stable, rather than the usual interpretation of illustrating change.