Philosophical Dictionary

“The only thing that is constant is change” is quoted in boardrooms and on mugs, and credited to Heraclitus. His surviving fragments never say it, and the river line may not mean what you think. Parmenides argued change is impossible. So who said it, and what did Heraclitus actually believe about change?

Materialism and idealism disagree about what reality is made of, and the fight has run since Plato called it a war of giants and gods. A bishop denied matter, a critic kicked a stone, Marx flipped Hegel upside down. So what do the two camps actually claim, and which side are most philosophers on today?

A viral line says crushing a cockroach makes you a hero and crushing a butterfly a villain. Nobody can trace it to Rumi, but the question is ancient: the Greeks fused beautiful and good into kalokagathia, Kant made beauty a symbol of morality, and psychologists tested the bias. Do our morals follow our eyes?

Philosophy means love of wisdom, and Plato’s Socrates called himself barren of it. Aristotle traced it to wonder, Russell put its value in uncertainty, and David Chalmers asked in 2015 why it makes so little progress. Thales used it to corner the olive market. So what is philosophy for, if it never settles anything?