heraclitus

You stated that before Heraclitus 'Greeks thought reality was essentially chaotic and impossible to understand.' Thales is a counter-example who is earlier than Heraclitus.

Ok, maybe some Sophists were not the most trust-worthy bunch of them all, but you cannot really omit Heraclitus or Democritus himself.

Plato, and Heraclitus before him, both thought that society would eventually collapse.

I was under the impression that it wasn't until Heraclitus that people thought things in our mind, like math, would correspond with external reality.

Plato's theory of forms (or ideas - they're two ways expressing the same theory in Plato, not oppositions) is arguably a response to earlier theories of Heraclitus and Parmenides[3].

Plato is trying to bridge these two theories: he wants to agree with Heraclitus that the world shows massive change, but also with Parmenides that not everything changes, and that something must subsist all the changing.

The famous quote "You can never step into the same river twice" is attributed to Heraclitus[1], but it's Plato who (first) tells us that Heraclitus said it[2].

As the great Heraclitus once said: "No man ever uses the same Emacs".

I think it's even older than buddhism, I seem to recall it was Heraclitus who put it as "change is the only permanence".

But if we go back and re-read Heraclitus, the guy against whom Aristotle fiercely battled, then the concept of "continuity" and "one vs many" concepts become a lot more blurry.

Heraclitus had it right that the only constant in the Universe is Change.

Heraclitus originated the idea of the Logos, a pattern underlying everything, and Plato built on this.

Before Plato and Heraclitus, Greeks thought reality was essentially chaotic and impossible to understand.