Zeno was a Greek Philosopher and mathematician of the southern Italy. He was a member of the School of Elea founded by Parmenides. He is well known for his Paradoxes which mathematicians’ view of reality for centuries. According to Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle called him the inventor of dialectics.
Zeno accompanied his teacher on a trip to Athens in 449 B.C. There he met a young Socrates and made enough of an impression to be included as a character in one of Plato’s books Parmenides. On his return to Elea he became active in politics and eventually was arrested for taking part in a plot against the city’s tyrant Nearchus. For his role in the conspiracy, he was tortured to death.
The four famous paradoxes of Zeno are the Dichotomy, Achilles, The Arrow and The Stadium. The most famous of the paradoxes, Achilles and the tortoise, is attributed to Parmenides himself. It is meant to show that motion is impossible. In a race where a tortoise is given a head start on Achilles, Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. He must first reach the place from which the tortoise started. By that time the tortoise will have got some way ahead. Achilles must then make up that and again the tortoise will be ahead. Zeno’s four most discussed paradoxes have been resolved in terms of differential calculus by Bertrand Russell, who claimed that Zeno should not be dismissed as a mere inventor of ingenious puzzles. Although all four arguments sound illogical and confusing, they are not simple to explain. Aristotle discarded them as fallacies without really showing why.
According to Plato, Zeno had already written a book before his trip to Athens. Unfortunately no work by Zeno has survived. But there is very little evidence that Zeno wrote more than one book.