  Parmenides’ disciples Melissus and Zeno developed this theme. Melissus argued that motion implies empty space to move into, but empty space is a nothing and so cannot exist, so that motion is impossible since it implies a contradiction. This argument requires the dubious premisses (1) that empty space is a nothing (which is denied by realists from Newton to Nerlich), and (2) that motion would have to be change relative to space. Even those who have held that empty space is a nothing (relationists from Leibniz to Mach and onward) have not generally denied motion, proposing instead that motion of a thing is change in the spatial relations between that thing and other things.