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From the day Zeno became Crates’ pupil, he showed a strong bent for philosophy, though with too much native modesty to assimilate Cynic shamelessness. This coincides with the influences of Cynic teaching, and was, at least in part, continued in his Stoic philosophy. Zeno is described as a haggard, dark-skinned person, living a spare, ascetic life despite his wealth. Just then, Crates of Thebes – the most famous Cynic living at that time in Greece – happened to be walking by, and the bookseller pointed to him. He was so pleased with the book's portrayal of Socrates that he asked the bookseller where men like Socrates were to be found. There he encountered Xenophon's Memorabilia. On a voyage from Phoenicia to Peiraeus he survived a shipwreck, after which he went to Athens and visited a bookseller. Whereupon, perceiving what this meant, he studied ancient authors." Zeno became a wealthy merchant. Diogenes reports that Zeno's interest in philosophy began when "he consulted the oracle to know what he should do to attain the best life, and that the god's response was that he should take on the complexion of the dead. Most of the details known about his life come from the biography and anecdotes preserved by Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, a few of which are confirmed by the Suda (a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia). 334 BC, in Citium in Cyprus and he was of possible Phoenician ancestry. It is, consequently, the forerunner of the Eristic method, or the method of strife.Zeno was born c. Besides, the method of indirect proof opened up for the sophist new possibilities in the way of contentious argument, and was very soon developed into a means of confuting an opponent. They earned for Zeno the title of "the first dialectician," and, because they seemed to be an unanswerable challenge to those who relied on the verdict of the senses, they helped to prepare the way for the skepticism of the Sophists.
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They are, however, specious, and might well have puzzled an opponent in those days, before logic had been developed into a science. The arguments are fallacious, because as Aristotle has no difficulty in showing, they are founded on on false notions of motion and space. Aristotle in his "Physics" has preserved the arguments by which Zeno tried to prove that motion is only apparent, or that real motion is an absurdity. This is now known as the method of indirect proof, or reductio ad absurdum, and it appears to have been used first by Zeno.
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There were, it seems, several discourses, in each of which he made a supposition, or hypothesis, and then proceeded to show the absurd consequences that would follow. Zeno's contribution to the literature of the school consisted of a treatise, now lost, in which, according to Plato, he argued indirectly against the reality of motion and the existence of the manifold. The chief doctrine of the school was the oneness and immutability of reality and the distrust of sense-knowledge which appears to testify to the existence of multiplicity and change. At his birthplace Xenophanes and Parmenides had established the metaphysical school of philosophy known as the Eleatic School. Greek philosopher, born at Elea, about 490 B.C. 48256 Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 15 - Zeno of Elea William Turner (1871-1936)