rmenides, and Parmenides wanted to counter the pluralism of the Pythagoreans. He also claimed that change and motion were illusions:
Since plurality and motion seem to be such evident data of our sense-experience, this bold position was naturally such as to induce a certain amount of ridicule. Zeno, a firm adherent of the theory of Parmenides, endeavors to prove it, or at least to demonstrate that it is by no means ridiculous, by the expedient of showing that the pluralism of the Pythagoreans is involved in insoluble difficulties, and that change and motion are impossible even on their pluralistic hypothesis (Copleston 54).
Zeno's book on the subject has been lost, but the paradoxes remain and have been addressed by a number of commentators over the centuries. The doctrine of pluralism that was attacked by Zeno simply stated that "there exist many things." Zeno argued instead that everything is alike, though what he meant by "alike" remains unclear from the fragment of the argument still in existence (Barnes 237). The Eleatics (of whom Zeno was one) denied the reality of multiplicity and motion, stating instead that there is one principle, Being, which is conceived of as material and motionless:
They do not deny, of course, that we sense motion and multiplicity, but they declare that what we sense is illusion: it is mere appearance. True being is to be found, not by sense but by thought, and thought shows that there can be no plurality, no movement, no change (Copleston 58).
This effort followed an ancient Greek desire to discover the one principle of the world. The world as it presents itself to our sense, however, is a pluralistic world. The issue is then how to reconcile the one principle with the plurality and change found in the world,. This is the problem of the One and the many:
The Pythagoreans asserted plurality to the practical exclusion of the One--there are many ones; the Eleatics asserted the ...