Eleatics:

(early fifth century BC) pre-Socratic philosophy of Elea (Greek colony of S. Italy), founded by Parmenides; rejected the validity of sense experience but looked for truth in logical standards of clarity & necessity.  Parmenides built arguments starting from sound premises.  Others employed the reduction ad absurdum argument to destroy the propositions of others by showing contradictions (Zeno's paradoxes); a reaction against the early physicalist philosophers (all existence in terms of primary matter, summed up as perpetual change); proposed the conception of universal unity of being, but one which the senses cannot cognize, because their reports are inconsistent; only with thought we can pass beyond appearances & arrive at the knowledge of being, at the fundamental truth that the "All is One". Furthermore, there can be no creation, for being cannot come from non-being, because a thing cannot arise from that which is different from it.

 

physiognomic:

the outward appearance of anything, taken as offering some insight into its character: the art of determining character or personal characteristics from the form or features of the body, especially of the face.