Heraclitus: The pre-Plato Platonist

Heraclitus does not so much ask or attempt to answer why the earth was made, but is more concerned with how we can come to understand why the earth was made. His many aphorisms claim that we can think and learn all that we like, but it does not mean that we can understand things or have proper insight. In this, he becomes a precursor to Platonic thought. Heraclitus writes that there exists an independent, objective Truth (much like Plato's idea of the forms) which we know of because of divine inculcation, but we are all asleep with regards to being able to truly understand it (Plato depicts this with his famous allegory of the cave). In essence, the divine law answers any and every question we can ever ask with regards to substance, method, why, or how, if only we can learn the proper insight that discovering the answers requires. We know the logos exists, but still need to remember how to wake up to its Truth.

Despite entering the Philosophical conversation post-Thales who disregarded Hesiod and Homer's discussion of the gods as the source of the universe, Heraclitus provides an intriguing return to the question of divine authority, using Thales' own declaration that the universe came from a single source for justification. Heraclitus proposed the idea of the logos, the single divine law of the universe. Heraclitus used this idea as both a substance - the stuff that the universe was made of - as well as a method - the law that governed the stuff that the universe was made of. By using logos as both a substance and a method, Heraclitus accomplished something that neither Thales, Anaximander, or Anaximenes, was able to do while simultaneously fulfilling their monistic hypotheses as well.
Just as "the beginning and the end are common on the circumference of a circle", Heraclitus proposes that all is tied up together in divinity. Thus, the quest has come full circle (pun intended), and has somewhat reconciled Thales with Homer yet also managed to make epistemological progress in many different directions as well.