Heraclitus and the Eternal Universe
Heraclitus was one of the good ol' boys of ancient southern Greece. He drove a car with a Confederate battle flag painted on the roof and yelled "whee-OOH!" a lot. Yeah, I know, it's usually pronounced CLY-tus, not CLEE-tus, but that's less conducive to word play. Anyway, why were (and are) Western people enamored with ancient Greek philosophers? Although nobody knows what Heraclitus looked like, here is a painting of him attributed to Johannes Moreelse from ca. 1625 I'll allow that some of the ancient philosophies are interesting. For that matter, Socrates had a fascinating method. The Ptolemaic system of geocentrism (Earth does not move, everything orbits us) was favored by the scientific community and the Roman Catholic Church . Greek philosophy influenced some of the Church Fathers, and can be see in the writings of Augustine. (When Augustine's work had a revival of sorts, things he had right were used but other things had to be corrected .)