We learn from Plato that Zeno was twenty-five years younger than Parmenides, and he wrote his defense of Parmenides as a young man. Because only a few fragments of Zeno's writings have been found, most of what we know of Zeno comes from what Aristotle said about him in Physics , Book 6, chapter 9. Zeno's contribution to Eleatic philosophy is entirely negative. He did not add anything positive to the teachings of Parmenides, but devoted himself to refuting the views of the opponents of Parmenides. True Being is absolutely static and unchangeable.
Common sense says there is both motion and plurality.
This is the Pythagorean notion of reality against which Zeno directed his arguments. Zeno showed that the common sense notion of reality leads to consequences at least as paradoxical as his master's. Back to Table of Contents Paradoxes of Multiplicity and Motion Zeno's arguments can be classified into two groups. The first group contains paradoxes against multiplicity, and are directed to showing that the 'unlimited' or the continuous, cannot be composed of units however small and however many. Continuing with the bisection process, we never come to a point, a stopping place, so a line cannot be composed of points.