Editing Parmenides (section)

==== Pre-Socratic philosophy ====
In modern interpretations, Parmenides is often seen as presenting a theory of unchanging "being" that spurred debate about the nature of change among subsequent natural philosophers in Presocratic philosophy.{{sfn|Palmer|2020|loc=§3.4}} However, there is no ancient testimony that supports this notion, and most interpreters of Parmenides in Antiquity appear to have read Parmenides as considering metaphysics and physics as two different aspects of the same reality.{{sfn|Palmer|2020|loc=§3.4}} Parmenides was a contemporary of [[Heraclitus]]. The two broached many of the same ideas, such as a world made of two competing opposites, reliability of the senses, and the nature of plurality—it is unclear if either influenced the other.{{Sfn|Vamvacas|2009|pp=157–158}}

Parmenides' philosophy formed the basis of the Eleatic school, which was continued by [[Melissus of Samos]] and [[Zeno of Elea]].  Melissus built on Parmenides' ideas, proposing a continuous eternal Being instead of a constant existence of the present. Zeno created ''[[reductio ad absurdum]]'' arguments to defend Parmenides' ideas against their critics.{{Sfn|Vamvacas|2009|p=150}}

In his work ''On Non-Being'', [[Gorgias]] includes both Parmenides and Melissus as philosophers who held that reality is one.{{sfn|Palmer|2020|loc=§3.4}} The pluralist theories of [[Empedocles]] and Anaxagoras and the atomists [[Leucippus]] and [[Democritus]] have also been seen as a potential response to Parmenides's arguments and conclusions.{{sfn|Sedley|1998}}