Fragment 11

The Greek words νομός ('pasture') and νόμος ('law') have identical spellings. This has led some commentators to speculate that perhaps this fragment is merely a a paraphrase and that Heraclitus originally used the noun νομός instead of the verb νέμεται ('to be driven to pasture') given here. Even though this is purely a conjecture, Heraclitus does employ a similar play on words in fragment 48. (See fragment 32 for another example of scholarly conjecture.)

If this fragment were intended as a play on words, it would imply that all things are ordered according to some natural law (a task accomplished by λόγος?) but that most are ignorant of this law and try to resist it or work against it — that's why it requires blows.