Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Elea ( Ancient Greek Ζήνων Zenon, Latinized Zeno, Zeno also the Elder; * around 490 BC in Elea; † around 430 BC, probably in Elea or Syracuse) was an ancient Greek philosopher. He is counted among the pre-Socratics. There is strong evidence that he was a friend and disciple of Parmenides of Elea. However, this is not clarified beyond doubt.

Teaching

Zenon saw his main task is to defend the doctrine of Parmenides against critical objections. Here he had a very astute and compelling art of reasoning. This is also what Aristotle called the inventor of the art of reasoning, which refers to Aristotle as dialectic.

Zenon mainly dealt with the problem of the continuum, in particular the relationship between space, time and movement. This was reflected in at least ten - Proclus reports of 40 - fallacies, ten of which have been handed down indirectly. The best known are the paradoxes of motion, the fallacy of Achilles and the tortoise, alleging a fast runner a slow runner could not overtake unless it that grant a boss as well as the related fallacies of non- ans- target - get - skill ( division paradox) and the non- run-away - ability and the Arrow paradox and the stadium paradox. More are Zeno's paradoxes of plurality and paradox from the load of millet.

The structure of the paradoxes follows the principle of indirect proof. They are designed so that at the beginning of irrefutable position will be adopted. An infinite regress is then constructed from the assumptions. So still to be traversed route is divided to argue that the second part yes also had to be run through again for example when sharing paradox. In this part of the then meets again to also. This is conceptually infinitely repeatable.

Zeno's argument turns in his paradoxes, the question is whether the world can be separated into discrete units, so there's divisibility, or whether the world actually forms a continuous unit. The assumption of separability leads to the problem that either everything is infinitely divisible or there must be last elementary quanta of space and time. The majority of the paradoxes now requires one of the two and concludes the impossibility of things and events that are experienced in everyday life quite possible. So we know from experience that every runner can achieve his goal. Zenon discussed in this way both the space and the movement.

Some interpreters assume that Zenon with his reasoning, the philosophy of his teacher Parmenides ( " There is only the infinite One, and all movement is an illusion " ) wanted to defend. Plato can report the Zenon ( in his dialogue " Parmenides " 128d ) that he Parmenides against the accusation that his rejection of the multiplicity and the movement would lead to absurd consequences, I want to take in protection with the evidence that adherence to exercise and multiplicity lead to even unsinnigeren conclusions. However, Zenon says there also that it was in this specification, an early work, the purloined him that his consent had been brought to the people without. At least we can say that Zeno's philosophy against the adoption of certain basic philosophical positions to explain the world depends secure. Against these positions also argues Parmenides. However, there are some contradictions of the paradoxes to Parmenides ' spherical worldview. Strictly speaking, can only deduce that the assumption of space and movement under the conditions given in the respective paradox leads to absurd consequences, so the conditions can not be true of Zeno's arguments.

Against the paradoxes variety of arguments have been put forward, which is why they are considered to be refuted. For measurements in the quantum world, they could, however, be confirmed in 1994 at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich: The motion of a quantum system has been proven brought alone by a sequence dense measurements to a standstill, resulting in the theoretical modeling of the quantum Zeno effect.

Source collections

• Laura Gemelli Marciano (eds. ): The pre-Socratic philosophers. Volume 2, Artemis & Winkler, Dusseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-538-03500-3, pp. 96-137 ( Greek source texts with German translation, notes and introduction to the life and work )