Читать книгу A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy онлайн

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The Philosophy of Zeno.

His arguments are against magnitude, multiplicity, and motion. There can be no magnitude, because a thing would then be both infinitely small and infinitely great. There can be no multiplicity of things, since they would be both limited and unlimited in number. There can be no motion, because (1)it is impossible to go through a fixed space; (2)it is impossible to go though a space that has movable limits; and (3)because of the relativity of motion. The dilemmas which he proposed of Achilles and the tortoise, the flying arrow at rest, and the bushel of corn are classic.10

The Results of the Conflict between Heracleitus and Parmenides.

2. Another result was that in the Greek thought the monistic theory was found to be useless in the study of nature. These early monistic views led up as necessary steps to pluralism, but they were not in themselves serviceable. The imperfection in the Milesian teaching appeared in the impassable gulf between Heracleitus and Parmenides. It now remained for the last Cosmologists to see if, on the basis of pluralism, they could not reconcile the preceding views and at the same time obtain a satisfactory metaphysics of nature.