Person

Zeno of Elea

c. 490–c. 430 BCE · 5th century BCE

Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher of the Eleatic school and a pupil of Parmenides. He is famous for his paradoxes, such as Achilles and the tortoise and the flying arrow, which argued that motion and plurality lead to contradictions and so defended Parmenides' view that reality is one and unchanging. Aristotle called him the inventor of dialectic.

Zeno of Elea
Image: Jan de Bisschop · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

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Elea

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Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Zeno of Elea. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/zeno-of-elea
MLA
“Zeno of Elea.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/zeno-of-elea. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Zeno of Elea.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/zeno-of-elea.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Zeno of Elea’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/zeno-of-elea (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻