Bar and dash originally denoted a 'yes' or 'no' response to divination. In the attempt to reflect greater detail it was extended by stages to four, then eight, and finally 64 permutations. The last came to be essentially a mystical interpretation of existence as much or more than the interpretation of given oracles (my opinion). At the level of eight the Doaists were effectively paradigmatic and were in advance of Western methodology until very recently. My work, which I define as 'paradigmatics', stresses the four and eight level applications. The former reflects metaphysical relations between two related pairs of concepts, forces, etc., where the latter reflects probabilistic realities and has strong parallels with polynomial expressions, in particular (a+b)^2,3.

Well,dear Charles,Your opinion to I Ging is almost right.

But I Ging is not so simple because the essential behind the divination change Chinese world outlook.

The essential behind the divination or 64 permutations is that everything could be divided into 2 parts, yes or no, right or false, 0 or 1 etc. That's the way also Chinese people like to treat things.

I Ging also have found that environment and human being, society developing at the same time will be harmony in our planet. Also it has told us that we should change if the circumstance around us has been changed, don't to change the circumstance.

That why many Chinese people don't want revolution.

I certainly had no intention to imply simplicity (presume you refer to my characterization re 'mysticism'). My analysis of Eckhart and Sankara indicates that they, also, not at all simplistically, derived the essentials of paradigmatic and modal (in the sense I use it the meaning is -- unity-plurality interactions) logic. Where we may find disagreement is over the value of a dyadic versus quaternary methodology. Aristotle and Whitehead grasped, in different ways, however, the importance of relating a given concept or notion to a context with three related notions, not unlike the Daoists when utilizing the earlier four/eight-fold systems.

Glad you brought up the question. We Westerners have been notoriously arrogant and fixated in our conceptions of normative methodology, especially in philosophy. Even a Nobel physicist (Hideki Yukawa) made the point (Creativity and Intuition, Kodansha, 1973).

You are almost right. The ***Book of Changes*** or ***I Ching*** is based on two Trigrams, forming a Hexagram.

I read a book once which looked at the similarities between the ***I Ching*** and the structure of DNA codons. The author found some interesting analogies between the two.

Do a search on "i ching dna codons."

@Charles

Well, your analysis to Daoists or I Ging is real good. That’s also what one of westerners think.

Definitely, I even don’t know about non-Chinese view to I Ging before your opinion in our discussion . But I even thought which way people(non-Chinese) thought in, maybe just in early Opium War or The First World war/The second World war.

Chinese Philosophy (Confucianism/ Buddhism/ Daoismus) in China had been damaged in Culture Revolution(1966-1977) because that Chairman Mao thought Chinese Philosophy as un-useful things to China. So Western Marxismus became Chinese mainstream. That’s a long story.

You told me that Eckhart and Sankara, or even Aristotle and Whitehead found essentials of things in western thinking way and also their ideas didn’t become western mainstream. There aren’t right or wrong to their thinking because history isn’t so long to answer these questions.

I Ging is not a methodology but a thinking way. Everything may be created using 0,1(Bar and dash) by finite-looping like computer calculation.

I will show a simple loop to describe one thing I Ging express.

define:a, b

loop: entity =Array(a,b)^x

There Array(a,b) is random array of a and b, e.g.aaaa,bbbb,abab… choose random queuing discipline as loop rule, the entity is everything. That also everything existed in the World.

@Bill Overcamp

i ching dna codons is the simple application of I Ging.

Maybe you know I Ging well.

But I could tell you more about Chinese Philosophy, including I ging.

Unfortunately, I know far too little... the five elements, the eight trigrams... it is all too fascinating!!

It has been some years since I looked into it and my memory is far from perfect.

One thing you might explain to me... how are wood and wind similar? They seem so different, yet they form one 'element.' I have always assumed that the similarity is simply an accident of Chinese syntax. Thus they may be similar in the same way that 'I' and 'eye' are similar... a simple accident of the English language, having no real significance.

Yet, the Chinese view this similarity as an essential aspect of reality. I makes little sense to my poor Western mentality.

An interesting book... ***Aristotle in China*** Language, Categories and Translation by Robert Wardy.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521028477/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0521771188&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0N52G34TQ36RK89PM9SH

@ Bill

Thank you for introducing me a good book.

In I Ging, there are two opposing and complementary principles in nature called Yin-Yang. In TaiChi,It's a indifferent idea.

The five elements you related is from Yin-Yang, So why wood and water is similar?

You will have found a answer after reading Yin-Yang.

ps: The five elements of Chinese philosophy: metal, wood, water, fire and earth .

wind is not in the five elements but it's similar with water,so usually Chinese people put wind togather with water.

Do you know Chinese Language? If not, certainly I will help you.

@Sunil

Howdy,

Although there are different ways people thinking in ancient society in different domains of the World. The epistemology of human beings from different areas may come close, because we have the same ancestor called ape. Just my own opinion.

Look backward, we find similar history in different countries in our world..

dear Fang, i don't think that without further qualification the thesis that we may think the same things because we're descended from the apes can support itself. look at how many differences we have in our thoughts. and it may be the case that we see history as similar because we want to see it as similar, what do you think?

In my humble opinion... any similarities across cultures are due to the reality, that we live in the same world and must deal with very similar situations.

@Haris

In my view,people coming from western think in different ways while China peole think in common way.

So westerners usually tell you difference between one thing and another. However people in China tell you the common points between them. That's what I usually like to find the similar things among different issues.

Apes and human beings also have common and difference aspects. Our thinking way based on different structures of our brains,our different individual past surroundings,..we use to think about our world.

@Bill

You are right.

In Ancient or modern society,people want to explain what they think,what they see,feel,smell...

People want to explain things in the way which they understand easy/well.

@Sunil

That's ways people want to find.

So it's a good way based this assumption to people.

@Sunil

In Chinese history, there is an idiom called *盲人摸象 mang ren mo xiang*. The original story is that five blind men touching an elephant,they draw conclusions from incomplete data(what they touch). So they got different views about an elephant, one held that elephant looked like a snake because he touched the tail of this elephant. While the another told us that "It's exactly like a huge fan." because he touched an ear of this elephant.

Is that so similar to our research work or scientific research? That's also your opinion that there are all mere manifestations.

@all:

I have done some extensive research on the "I Ching". I have pre-computed all permutations and calculated every probability of each hexagram. I have also measured the Hamilton-Distance between various hexagrams. The "I Ching" and also the "Tao te king" is like a good, old friend to me. You can find all my researches here: http://tetramatrix.sourceforge.net

Additional links:

> http://forums.abrahadabra.com/showthread.php?4063-The-81-Lo-Shu-Tones-within-the-729-Fabric

> http://finitegeometry.org/sc/64/iching.html

> http://knol.google.com/k/quaternion-group-q8-and-yi-jing-i-ching-hexagrams

> http://iching.egoplex.com/structure.html

> http://www.biroco.com/yijing/sequence.htm

> http://taolodge.com/flash/sequencer.html