"Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep." - DKB1
Heraclitus suggests that most Humans beings walk through life perceiving the world but not understanding it; It is as though they are sleepwalking. Others, like Heraclitus, seek to offer an account for how and what things are; they divide up the world accordingly. Yet such men fail to recognise that all things come to pass in accordance with an underlying structure of which they lack experience. This structure is what Heraclitus refers to as the 'Logos'.
'Logos', an apparently challenging term to translate, literally means 'I say', but sometimes is interpreted to mean 'account' or 'Word'. It is the root word from which we derive 'ology' in words such as theology, pharmacology or biology. Heraclitus then, unlike other Pre-Socratics, appears to concern himself with how we think about the way we think about the world.
This is of practical significance given that sensory information is important, but inadequate if we do not have the right language or framework through which to interpret this information. To consider for a moment a hard disk; data must be stored and retrieved by convention otherwise it is nothing more than an arbitrary string of bits.
Contrary to what Plato and Aristotle thought, Heraclitus does not deny the law of non contradiction. He would in fact advocate that apparent contradictions are not what they appear. Given all thing come to pass in accordance with structure, how we resolve apparent contradictions can teach us something. His means of exposing this message or 'Logos' in the world around us is by forcing us to 'do the work' to discover it.
One explanation then of Heraclitus is that his goal is to imitate the complexity of the real world by presenting the reader with a series of puzzles, paradoxes, and other literary devices intentionally to aid in the discovery of the 'Logos'. His statements are not meant literally, but instead are meant to offer the opportunity to discover something about the world.
One such conclusion then might be that we can arrive at general principles and ideas because there is an underlying structure in the world. The world is reasonable [in the cognitive sense]. Heraclitus views his task as that of a tutor not providing insights but offering individuals the means of discovering the answers for themselves. In so doing Heraclitus intends that the individual will, by virtue of reason, truly understand the world around them.
