Permenides ( late sixth or early fifth century BCE)

Parmenides of Elea (

 late sixth or early fifth century BCE) was a pre-SocraticGreek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia(Greater Greece, included Southern Italy). He was the founder of the Eleatic school ofphilosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In "the way of truth" (a part of the poem), he explains how reality (coined as "what-is") is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. In "the way of opinion," he explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful. These ideas had a strong e

ffect on Plato, and in turn, influenced the whole of Western philosophy.
Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea (now Ascea), which, according toHerodotus,

 had been founded shortly before 535 BCE. He was descended from a wealthy and illustrious family.
The first hero cult of a philosopher we know of was Parmenides' dedication of a heroon to his teacher Ameinias in Elea. Parmenides was the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Of his life in Elea, it was said that he had written the laws of the city. His most important pupil was Zeno, who according to Plato was 25 years his junior, and was regarded as his eromenos. Parmenides had a large influence on Plato, who not only named a dialogue, Parmenides, after him, but always spoke of him with veneration.
Parmenides attempted to distinguish between the unity of nature and its variety, insisting in the Way of Truth upon the reality of its unity, which is therefore the object of knowledge, and upon the unreality of its variety, which is therefore the object, not of knowledge, but of opinion. In the Way of Opinion he propounded a theory of the world of seeming and its development, pointing out, however, that, in accordance with the principles already laid down, these cosmological speculations do not pretend to anything more than mere appearance.
Parmenides made the ontological argument against nothingness, essentially denying the possible existence of a void. According to Aristotle, this led Democritus and Leucippus, and many other physicists, to propose the atomic theory, which supposes that everything in the universe is either atoms or voids, specifically to contradict Parmenides' argument.
Frederick Best wrote a story inspired by the poem On Nature called Cosmic Foam, in which the narrator journeys beyond this universe to a place between the One and the void and gains a new understanding of the nature of reality.