Books about Heraclitus from Amazon.com

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first "creativity teacher," says Roger von Oech, whose bestselling book A Whack on the Side of the Head set the standard for out-of-the-box thinking In Expect the Unexpected, Von Oech uses 30 of Heraclitus's pithy and paradoxical epigrams to approach problems in a fresh manner. He explains his premise: "Creative thinking involves imagining familiar things in a new light, digging below the surface to find previously undetected patterns, and finding connections among unrelated phenomena."

Von Oech uses the epigrams as creativity exercises--accompanied by mental puzzles, anecdotes, questions, and punchy footnotes--to demonstrate that Heraclitus's 2,500-year-old creative insights have aged well. With his whimsical wand, von Oech transforms the epigram "A Donkey prefers garbage to gold" into an exploration of values. He uses Heraclitus's observation that "A wonderful harmony is created when we join together the seemingly unconnected" to examine the use of metaphors in understanding problems. When Heraclitus observes that "Dogs bark at what they don't understand," Von Oech crafts a meditation about criticism. Executives, students, teachers, and parents will find an exciting and entertaining map for changing thought patterns, tolerating ambiguity, confounding expectations, and searching for hidden meanings. --Barbara Mackoff.
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In the sixth century b.c.-twenty-five hundred years before Einstein-Heraclitus of Ephesus declared that energy is the essence of matter, that everything becomes energy in flux, in relativity His great book, On Nature, the world's first coherent philosophical treatise and touchstone for Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius, has long been lost to history-but its surviving fragments have for thousands of years tantalized our greatest thinkers, from Montaigne to Nietzsche, Heidegger to Jung. Now, acclaimed poet Brooks Haxton presents a powerful free-verse translation of all 130 surviving fragments of the teachings of Heraclitus, with the ancient Greek originals beautifully reproduced en face..
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"To be wise is one thing: to know the thought that directs all things through all things." "We should not act like the children of our parents " "I searched my nature." - from the Fragments of Heraclitus This bright, deep, meditative jewel-like study brings Heraclitus to life in a new way, and shows him to be one of the principal sources of Western mystical thinking. From Geldard's point of view, the study of Heraclitus is not just an academic matter but, on the contrary, presents us with very real existential and phenomenological challenges. The book includes new translations of all the essential fragments. Geldard, through his exploration of Heraclitus, shows us, "The more that human beings openly and humbly seek higher knowledge, the more they develop the power to perceive it, until finally they penetrate to the hidden universal order. The result of this penetration is knowledge of the Logos, that 'which directs all things through all things.' The acquisition of this knowledge is not an event; it is a stance in the world. It is Being in its fullness.".
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Handbook of Greek Philosophy is a real guide for anyone who wants to know about Ancient Greek philosophy, but he does not know how to start. Since there are thousands of writings about it, the one who is eager to be informed of Greek philosophy, is all at sea. With the present study one can be gradually initiated into the main principles of the great philosophers, whose thought is the basis of the modern philosophical thought. Due to chronological presentation of the fifteen Greek philosophical schools, the reader can gradually get to the understanding of the philosophical terms and concepts, beginning with the simple (of Thales, Anaximander etc..) and proceeding to the most complex ones (Plato, Aristotle etc..). The original fragments, which have been carefully selected out of thousands, along with their thorough analysis, can enable the reader to fathom the reasoning of the Greek thinkers, and acquire a deep comprehension of their Gnoseology, Ontology and Ethics. With this substantial work of scholarship, both the student and the teacher of philosophy alike can find useful concepts, ideas and quotations, so as to broaden their knowledge and views of philosophy. Apart from that, this essay can help them to make a further inquiry concerning Ontology and Ethics of Greek Philosophy..
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So many books published these days seem to deliberately ignore the forest for the trees, or the leaves, or the chloroplasts, or the chemistry of biopigments Readers interested in big questions usually have to make do with the obligatory summing-up at the end, in which the author tries to justify his or her narrow interest through heroic feats of recontextualization. The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking, on the other hand, is 600 pages of well-expressed deep thought on the biggest picture of them all. In roughly chronological order, editor Dennis Danielson presents 85 sets of excerpts from big thinkers from biblical times to the present, introducing each to the modern reader with insightful running commentary that is consistently helpful without being obtrusive.

The ancient Greeks hit the ground running, leaving us a rich conceptual legacy, which we are still exploring and exploiting even as our own work becomes more and more machine-mediated. Danielson gives us a wide base of ancient thought to give a sense of our heritage. He includes both obvious choices, such as Plato, and lesser-known writers, such as Parmenides. The often neglected Middle Ages brought us Ptolemy, Moses Maimonides, and others who set the stage for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the writings from these times betray an unexpected continuity of thought between the ancient and modern eras. Of course, the late-20th-century selections of such writers as Freeman Dyson and Steven Weinberg, which close the book, shouldn't imply an end to cosmological thinking. If anything, the last chapters of The Book of the Cosmos provoke a hunger for more. --Rob Lightner.
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Taken from the Great Philosphers, Volume II.
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Behind the superficial obscurity of what fragments we have of Heraclitus' thought, Professor Kahn claims that it is possible to detect a systematic view of human existence, a theory of language which sees ambiguity as a device for the expression of multiple meaning, and a vision of human life and death within the larger order of nature. The fragments are presented here in a readable order; translation and commentary aim to make accessible the power and originality of a systematic thinker and the first great master of artistic prose. The commentary locates Heraclitus within the tradition of early Greek thought, but stresses the importance of his ideas for contemporary theories of language, literature and philosophy..
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