THE ELEATIC SCHOOL

Based in the Ionian colony of Elea (modern-day Velia) in southern Italy, and primarily associated with Parmenides (early fifth century BC) and Melissus of Samos (mid fifth century BC), the Eleatic school shared the Pythagorean disregard for the changeable world of everyday appearances and argued that true being was neither created, changed, nor destroyed. Parmenides is credited here with offering an early example of a deductive argument for his claims, based on considerations of thought and language: We cannot have knowledge of something that does not exist (nor can we speak intelligently of it). Change implies the creation or destruction of something that either did not previously exist or that no longer exists; therefore, we cannot know (or even speak about) anything that changes. A similar line of thought also establishes that everything that exists is one and the same, presumably on the grounds that a plenum of unchangeable entities would be redundant. While there are clearly problems with this argument, the importance of the Eleatic school lies in its methodological approach, and the attempt to reason from first principles rather than transmit mystical inspiration.