JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This fine engraving of Zeno of Elea (490-430 BCE) was printed in 1739 and appeared in Veterum Illustrium Philosophorum, Poetarum, Rhetorim et Oratorum Imagines...by Jo. Petri Bellorii, and published in Rome. It is a fairly large image for a portrait like this, measuring 8.5x5"inches on a sheet 13x9", engraved on a very heavy and thick paper.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"Zeno of Elea, 5th c. B.C.E. thinker, is known exclusively for propounding a number of ingenious paradoxes. The most famous of these purport to show that motion is impossible by bringing to light apparent or latent contradictions in ordinary assumptions regarding its occurrence. Zeno also argued against the commonsense assumption that there are many things by showing in various ways how it, too, leads to contradiction..." More here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zeno-elea/
It is a little curious to me that in Augustus de Morgan's wonderful A Budget of Paradoxes that there isn't a single hit for Zeno in the 150 mentions of "paradox" in the work. Full text for that here at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23100/23100-h/23100-h.htm
If you'd like to own the original, check out "Zeno" in the blog's bookstore:http://longstreet.typepad.com/books/2014/05/catalog-1-2014-physics-math.html
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