Definition of zeno of elea in English English dictionary
born 495 died 430 BC Greek philosopher and mathematician. He was called by Aristotle the inventor of dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes (see paradoxes of Zeno). As a pupil and friend of Parmenides, he took it upon himself to reply to those who asserted that his master's doctrine of "the one" (i.e., indivisible reality) was inconsistent (see monism); he tried to show that the assumption of the existence of "the many" (i.e., a plurality of things in time and space) carried with it more serious inconsistencies