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104-426: Taiji ( 太極 ) is a compound of tai ( 太 'great', 'supreme') and ji ( 極 'pole', 'extremity'). Used together, taiji may be understood as 'source of the world'. Common English translations of taiji in the cosmological sense include "Supreme Ultimate", "Supreme Pole", and "Great Absolute". Scholars Zhang and Ryden explain the ontological necessity of taiji . Any philosophy that asserts two elements such as

208-472: A monistic concept similar to wuji , as in the Wujitu diagram. Wuji literally translates as "without roof pole", but means without limit, polarity, and/or opposite. Compared with wuji , taiji describes movement and change wherein limits do arise. While wuji is undifferentiated, timeless, absolute, infinite potential, taiji is often wrongly portrayed as conflictual, differentiated and dualistic, where as

312-514: A synthetic language , the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked with a case or other morpheme . For example, the German compound Kapitänspatent consists of the lexemes Kapitän (sea captain) and Patent (license) joined by an -s- (originally a genitive case suffix); and similarly, the Latin lexeme paterfamilias contains the archaic genitive form familias of

416-544: A complete mystery to academics. Regardless of their historical relation to the text, the philosophical depth of the Ten Wings made the I Ching a perfect fit to Han period Confucian scholarship. The inclusion of the Ten Wings reflects a widespread recognition in ancient China, found in the Zuo zhuan and other pre-Han texts, that the I Ching was a rich moral and symbolic document useful for more than professional divination. Arguably

520-447: A compound noun such as place name begins as spaced in most attestations and then becomes hyphenated as place-name and eventually solid as placename , or the spaced compound noun file name directly becomes solid as filename without being hyphenated. German, a fellow West Germanic language , has a somewhat different orthography , whereby compound nouns are virtually always required to be solid or at least hyphenated; even

624-449: A compound noun, resulting in a pleonasm . One example is the English word pathway . In Arabic , there are two distinct criteria unique to Arabic, or potentially Semitic languages in general. The initial criterion involves whether the possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ appears or is absent when the first element is definite. The second criterion deals with the appearance/absence of

728-568: A consensus formed around 2nd-century AD scholar Ma Rong 's attribution of the text to the joint work of Fuxi, King Wen of Zhou, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius , but this traditional attribution is no longer generally accepted. Another tradition about the I Ching was that most of it was written by Tang of Shang . The basic unit of the Zhou yi is the hexagram ( 卦 guà ), a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines ( 爻 yáo ). Each line

832-426: A formal head, and its meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound white-collar is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a must-have is not a verb but a noun. The meaning of this type of compound can be glossed as "(one) whose B

936-517: A gradual scale (such as a mix of colours). Appositional compounds are lexemes that have two (contrary or simultaneous) attributes that classify the compound. All natural languages have compound nouns. The positioning of the words (i.e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc.) varies according to the language. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before

1040-409: A longer word or sign. Consequently, a compound is a unit composed of more than one stem, forming words or signs. If the joining of the words or signs is orthographically represented with a hyphen, the result is a hyphenated compound (e.g., must-have , hunter-gatherer) . If they are joined without an intervening space, it is a closed compound (e.g., footpath , blackbird ). If they are joined with

1144-503: A method of yarrow stalk divination that is still used throughout the Far East. In the modern period, Gao Heng attempted his own reconstruction, which varies from Zhu Xi in places. Another divination method , employing coins, became widely used in the Tang dynasty and is still used today. In the modern period; alternative methods such as specialized dice and cartomancy have also appeared. In

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1248-605: A misreading of the Records of the Grand Historian . Although it rested on historically shaky grounds, the association of the I Ching with Confucius gave weight to the text and was taken as an article of faith throughout the Han and Tang dynasties. The I Ching was not included in the burning of the Confucian classics , and textual evidence strongly suggests that Confucius did not consider

1352-576: A more rigorous representation and interpretation of I Ching. Gao Heng , an expert in pre-Qin China, re-investigated its use as a Zhou dynasty oracle. Edward Shaughnessy proposed a new dating for the various strata of the text. New archaeological discoveries have enabled a deeper level of insight into how the text was used in the centuries before the Qin dynasty. Proponents of newly reconstructed Western Zhou readings, which often differ greatly from traditional readings of

1456-405: A notable impact on the 1960s counterculture and on 20th century cultural figures such as Philip K. Dick , John Cage , Jorge Luis Borges , Terence McKenna and Hermann Hesse . Joni Mitchell references the six yang hexagram in "Amelia", a song on the album Hejira , where she describes the image of "...six jet planes leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain...". It also inspired

1560-466: A significant part in India and Europe. However, speculations of a Gnostic-dualistic character are foreign to the original thought of the I Ching ; what it posits is simply the ridgepole, the line. With this line, which in itself represents oneness, duality comes into the world, for the line at the same time posits an above and a below, a right and left, front and back – in a word, the world of the opposites. In

1664-472: A space (e.g. school bus, high school, lowest common denominator ), then the result – at least in English – may be an open compound . The meaning of the compound may be similar to or different from the meaning of its components in isolation. The component stems of a compound may be of the same part of speech —as in the case of the English word footpath , composed of the two nouns foot and path —or they may belong to different parts of speech, as in

1768-520: A synthesis of the two, arguing that the text was primarily a work of divination that could be used in the process of moral self-cultivation, or what the ancients called "rectification of the mind" in the Great Learning . Zhu Xi's reconstruction of I Ching yarrow stalk divination , based in part on the Great Commentary account, became the standard form and is still in use today. As China entered

1872-484: Is A", where B is the second element of the compound and A the first. A bahuvrihi compound is one whose nature is expressed by neither of the words: thus a white-collar person is neither white nor a collar (the collar's colour is a metonym for socioeconomic status). Other English examples include barefoot . Copulative compounds ( dvandva in the Sanskrit tradition) are compounds with two semantic heads, for example in

1976-416: Is a modern invention. Yin and yang are represented by broken and solid lines: yin is broken ( ⚋ ) and yang is solid ( ⚊ ). Different constructions of three yin and yang lines lead to eight trigrams (八卦) namely, Qian (乾, ☰), Dui (兌, ☱), Li (離, ☲), Zhen (震, ☳), Xun (巽, ☴), Kan (坎, ☵), Gen (艮, ☶), and Kun (坤, ☷). The different combinations of the two trigrams lead to 64 hexagrams. The following table numbers

2080-661: Is actually morphological derivation . Some languages easily form compounds from what in other languages would be a multi-word expression. This can result in unusually long words, a phenomenon known in German (which is one such language) as Bandwurmwörter ("tapeworm words"). Compounding extends beyond spoken languages to include Sign languages as well, where compounds are also created by combining two or more sign stems. So-called " classical compounds " are compounds derived from classical Latin or ancient Greek roots . Compound formation rules vary widely across language types. In

2184-622: Is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics . The I Ching was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC). Over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200 BC), it transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the Ten Wings . After becoming part of

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2288-405: Is another type of verb–noun (or noun–verb) compound, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a gerund , such as breastfeeding , finger-pointing , etc. The noun is often an instrumental complement. From these gerunds new verbs can be made: (a mother) breastfeeds (a child) and from them new compounds mother-child breastfeeding , etc. In

2392-404: Is either broken or unbroken. The received text of the Zhou yi contains all 64 possible hexagrams, along with the hexagram's name ( 卦名 guàmíng ), a short hexagram statement ( 彖 tuàn ), and six line statements ( 爻辭 yáocí ). The statements were used to determine the results of divination, but the reasons for having two different methods of reading the hexagram are not known, and it

2496-773: Is merely an orthographic convention: as in other Germanic languages, arbitrary noun phrases , for example "girl scout troop", "city council member", and "cellar door", can be made up on the spot and used as compound nouns in English too. For example, German Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitän would be written in English as "Danube steamship transport company captain" and not as "Danube­steamship­transportcompany­captain". The meaning of compounds may not always be transparent from their components, necessitating familiarity with usage and context. The addition of affix morphemes to words (such as suffixes or prefixes , as in employ → employment ) should not be confused with nominal composition, as this

2600-420: Is not explained, and none of the stories employ predetermined commentaries, patterns, or interpretations. Only the hexagrams and line statements are used. By the 4th century BC, the authority of the Zhou yi was also cited for rhetorical purposes, without relation to any stated divination. The Zuo Zhuan does not contain records of private individuals, but Qin dynasty records found at Shuihudi show that

2704-457: Is not known how the yarrow stalks became numbers, or how specific lines were chosen from the line readings. In the hexagrams, broken lines were used as shorthand for the numbers 6 ( 六 ) and 8 ( 八 ), and solid lines were shorthand for values of 7 ( 七 ) and 9 ( 九 ). The Great Commentary contains a late classic description of a process where various numerological operations are performed on a bundle of 50 stalks, leaving remainders of 6 to 9. Like

2808-527: Is not known why hexagram statements would be read over line statements or vice versa. The book opens with the first hexagram statement, yuán hēng lì zhēn ( 元亨利貞 ). These four words are often repeated in the hexagram statements and were already considered an important part of I Ching interpretation in the 6th century BC. Edward Shaughnessy describes this statement as affirming an "initial receipt" of an offering, "beneficial" for further "divining". The word zhēn ( 貞 , ancient form [REDACTED] )

2912-430: Is the "great primal beginning" of all that exists, t'ai chi – in its original meaning, the "ridgepole". Later Indian philosophers devoted much thought to this idea of a primal beginning. A still earlier beginning, wu chi , was represented by the symbol of a circle. Under this conception, t'ai chi was represented by the circle divided into the light and the dark, yang and yin, [REDACTED] . This symbol has also played

3016-589: Is the longest word in Finnish, but evidence of its actual use is scant and anecdotal at best. Compounds can be rather long when translating technical documents from English to some other language, since the lengths of the words are theoretically unlimited, especially in chemical terminology. For example, when translating an English technical document to Swedish, the term "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to rörelse­uppskattnings­sökintervalls­inställningar , though in reality,

3120-448: Is the shadow of philosophy and the charge of all living substances, that of the nature of the divine. Compound (linguistics) In linguistics , a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign ) that consists of more than one stem . Compounding , composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make

3224-415: Is translated as " nadir ". The Way has attributes and evidence, but it has no action and no form. It may be transmitted but cannot be received. It may be apprehended but cannot be seen. From the root, from the stock, before there was heaven or earth, for all eternity truly has it existed. It inspirits demons and gods, gives birth to heaven and earth. It lies above the zenith but is not high; it lies beneath

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3328-496: Is very similar to the Daoist idea "reversal is the movement of the Dao". The "supreme ultimate" creates yang and yin. Movement generates yang, and when its activity reaches its limit, it becomes tranquil. Through tranquility the supreme ultimate generates yin. When tranquility has reached its limit, there is a return to movement. Movement and tranquility, in alternation, become each the source of

3432-549: The yin-yang of Chinese philosophy will also look for a term to reconcile the two, to ensure that both belong to the same sphere of discourse. The term 'supreme ultimate' performs this role in the philosophy of the Book of Changes . In the Song dynasty it became a metaphysical term on a par with the Way . Taiji is understood to be the highest conceivable principle from which existence flows. This

3536-413: The 1911 Revolution , the I Ching lost its significance in political philosophy, but it maintained cultural influence as one of China's most ancient texts. Chinese writers offered parallels between the I Ching and subjects such as linear algebra and logic in computer science , aiming to demonstrate that ancient Chinese cosmology had anticipated Western discoveries. The sinologist Joseph Needham took

3640-566: The Eastern Han , I Ching interpretation divided into two schools, originating in a dispute over minor differences between different editions of the received text. The first school, known as New Text criticism, was more egalitarian and eclectic, and sought to find symbolic and numerological parallels between the natural world and the hexagrams. Their commentaries provided the basis of the School of Images and Numbers . The other school, Old Text criticism,

3744-661: The I Ching was an influential text across East Asia. In 1557, the Korean Neo-Confucianist philosopher Yi Hwang produced one of the most influential I Ching studies of the early modern era, claiming that the spirit was a principle ( li ) and not a material force ( qi ). Hwang accused the Neo-Confucian school of having misread Zhu Xi. His critique proved influential not only in Korea but also in Japan. Other than this contribution,

3848-695: The I Ching —known in Korean as the Yeok Gyeong  ( 역경 )—was not central to the development of Korean Confucianism, and by the 19th century, I Ching studies were integrated into the silhak reform movement. In medieval Japan, secret teachings on the I Ching —known in Japanese as the Eki Kyō  ( 易経 )—were publicized by Rinzai Zen master Kokan Shiren and the Shintoist Yoshida Kanetomo during

3952-703: The Neo-Confucianism philosophy that developed during the Song dynasty , taiji was viewed "as a microcosm equivalent to the structure of the human body." The Song-era philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073 CE) wrote the Taijitushuo ( 太極圖說 ) "Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate", which became the cornerstone of Neo-Confucianist cosmology. Zhou's brief text synthesized aspects of Chinese Buddhism and Daoism with

4056-513: The Shuogua attributes to the symbolic function of the hexagrams the ability to understand self, world, and destiny. Throughout the Ten Wings, there are passages that seem to purposefully increase the ambiguity of the base text, pointing to a recognition of multiple layers of symbolism. The Great Commentary associates knowledge of the I Ching with the ability to "delight in Heaven and understand fate;"

4160-507: The Tang dynasty , Emperor Taizong of Tang ordered Kong Yingda to create a canonical edition of the I Ching . Choosing Wang Bi 's 3rd-century Annotated Book of Changes ( Zhōuyì zhù ; 周易注 ) as the official commentary, he added to it further commentary drawing out the subtler details of Wang Bi's explanations. The resulting Right Meaning of the Book of Changes ( Zhōuyì zhèngyì ; 周易正義 ) became

4264-593: The Warring States period ( c.  475  – 221 BC). It is possible that other divination systems existed at this time; the Rites of Zhou name two other such systems, the Lianshan  [ zh ] and the Guicang . The name Zhou yi literally means the 'changes' ( 易 ; yì ) of the Zhou dynasty . The 'changes' involved have been interpreted as the transformations of hexagrams, of their lines, or of

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4368-514: The Zhou yi a "classic". An ancient commentary on the Zhou yi found at Mawangdui portrays Confucius as endorsing it as a source of wisdom first and an imperfect divination text second. However, since the Ten Wings became canonized by Emperor Wu of Han together with the original I Ching as the Zhou Yi, it can be attributed to the positions of influence from the Confucians in the government. Furthermore,

4472-482: The Zhou yi does not contain any cosmological analogies, the I Ching was read as a microcosm of the universe that offered complex, symbolic correspondences. The official edition of the text was literally set in stone, as one of the Xiping Stone Classics . The canonized I Ching became the standard text for over two thousand years, until alternate versions of the Zhou yi and related texts were discovered in

4576-479: The Zhou yi itself, yarrow stalk divination dates to the Western Zhou period, although its modern form is a reconstruction. The ancient narratives Zuo Zhuan and Guoyu contain the oldest descriptions of divination using the Zhou yi . The two histories describe more than twenty successful divinations conducted by professional soothsayers for royal families between 671 and 487 BC. The method of divination

4680-513: The Zuo Zhuan stories, individual lines of hexagrams are denoted by using the genitive particle zhi ( 之 ), followed by the name of another hexagram where that specific line had another form. In later attempts to reconstruct ancient divination methods, the word zhi was interpreted as a verb meaning 'moving to', an apparent indication that hexagrams could be transformed into other hexagrams. However, there are no instances of "changeable lines" in

4784-588: The Zuo Zhuan . In all 12 out of 12 line statements quoted, the original hexagrams are used to produce the oracle. In 136 BC, Emperor Wu of Han named the Zhou yi "the first among the classics", dubbing it the Classic of Changes or I Ching . Emperor Wu's placement of the I Ching among the Five Classics was informed by a broad span of cultural influences that included Confucianism , Taoism , Legalism , yin-yang cosmology , and Wu Xing physical theory. While

4888-497: The "Forty Chapter" tai chi classic that Yang Banhou gave to Wu Quanyou says the following about the connect between tai chi and spirituality: If the essence of material substances lies in their phenomenological reality, then the presence of the ontological status of abstract objects shall become clear in the final culmination of the energy that is derived from oneness and the Real. How can man learn this truth? By truly seeking that which

4992-442: The 1968 song " While My Guitar Gently Weeps " by The Beatles . The modern period also brought a new level of skepticism and rigor to I Ching scholarship. Li Jingchi spent several decades producing a new interpretation of the text, which was published posthumously in 1978. Modern data scientists including Alex Liu proposed to represent and develop I Ching methods with data science 4E framework and latent variable approaches for

5096-466: The 20th century. Part of the canonization of the Zhou yi bound it to a set of ten commentaries called the Ten Wings . The Ten Wings are of a much later provenance than the Zhou yi , and are the production of a different society. The Zhou yi was written in Early Old Chinese , while the Ten Wings were written in a predecessor to Middle Chinese . The specific origins of the Ten Wings are still

5200-611: The 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram , which can be looked up in the I Ching . The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence . The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching has been discussed and debated over the centuries. Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision-making, as informed by Confucianism , Taoism and Buddhism . The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for

5304-622: The American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou ( r.   c.  827  – 782  BC). A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips discovered in 1994 shows that the Zhou yi was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as

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5408-916: The Australian Aboriginal language Jingulu , a Pama–Nyungan language , it is claimed that all verbs are V+N compounds, such as "do a sleep", or "run a dive", and the language has only three basic verbs: do , make , and run . A special kind of compounding is incorporation , of which noun incorporation into a verbal root (as in English backstabbing , breastfeed , etc.) is most prevalent (see below). Verb–verb compounds are sequences of more than one verb acting together to determine clause structure. They have two types: trɔ turn dzo leave trɔ dzo turn leave "turn and leave" जाकर jā-kar go- CONJ . PTCP I Ching The I Ching or Yijing ( Chinese : 易經 , Mandarin: [î tɕíŋ] ), usually translated Book of Changes or Classic of Changes ,

5512-674: The Chinese Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East and was the subject of scholarly commentary. Between the 18th and 20th centuries, it took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought. As a divination text, the I Ching is used for a Chinese form of cleromancy known as I Ching divination in which bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of

5616-516: The Danube Steam Shipping"), but there is no evidence that this association ever actually existed. In Finnish, although there is theoretically no limit to the length of compound words, words consisting of more than three components are rare. Internet folklore sometimes suggests that lentokone­suihkuturbiinimoottori­apumekaanikko­aliupseerioppilas (airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student)

5720-516: The English compound doghouse , where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of doghouse . An exocentric compound ( bahuvrihi in the Sanskrit tradition) is a hyponym of some unexpressed semantic category (such as a person, plant, or animal): none (neither) of its components can be perceived as

5824-473: The I Ching as mentioned in his writings. The psychologist Carl Jung took interest in the possible universal nature of the imagery of the I Ching , and he introduced an influential German translation by Richard Wilhelm by discussing his theories of archetypes and synchronicity . Jung wrote, "Even to the most biased eye, it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one's own character, attitude, and motives." The book had

5928-484: The I Ching was central to Leibniz's characteristica universalis , or 'universal language', which in turn inspired the standards of Boolean logic and for Gottlob Frege to develop predicate logic in the late 19th century. In the 20th century, Jacques Derrida identified Hegel's argument as logocentric , but accepted without question Hegel's premise that the Chinese language cannot express philosophical ideas. After

6032-632: The Kamakura era. I Ching studies in Japan took on new importance during the Edo period , during which over 1,000 books were published on the subject by over 400 authors. The majority of these books were serious works of philology, reconstructing ancient usages and commentaries for practical purposes. A sizable minority focused on numerology, symbolism, and divination. During this time, over 150 editions of earlier Chinese commentaries were reprinted across Edo Japan, including several texts that had become lost in China. In

6136-538: The Shanghai Library, was almost certainly arranged in the King Wen sequence, and it has even been proposed that a pottery paddle from the Western Zhou period contains four hexagrams in the King Wen sequence. Whichever of these arrangements is older, it is not evident that the order of the hexagrams was of interest to the original authors of the Zhou yi . The assignment of numbers, binary or decimal, to specific hexagrams,

6240-583: The Supreme Ultimate ( t'ai-chi 太極 ) above, one could immediately produce both fire and water. This is because Yin and Yang share a common ch'i and move each other. Taiji also appears in the Xici , a commentary to the I Ching . It is traditionally attributed to Confucius but more likely dates to about the 3rd century BCE. Therefore there is in the Changes the Great Primal Beginning. This generates

6344-455: The Ten Wings directly into the central text of the I Ching , creating such a persuasive narrative that Han commentators were no longer considered significant. A century later Han Kangbo added commentaries on the Ten Wings to Wang Bi's book, creating a text called the Zhouyi zhu . The principal rival interpretation was a practical text on divination by the soothsayer Guan Lu . At the beginning of

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6448-504: The Ten Wings tends to use diction and phrases such as "the master said", which was previously commonly seen in the Analects , thereby implying the heavy involvement of Confucians in its creation as well as institutionalization. In the canonical I Ching , the hexagrams are arranged in an order dubbed the King Wen sequence after King Wen of Zhou, who founded the Zhou dynasty and supposedly reformed

6552-570: The Two Modes are thereby established. The alternation and combination of yang and yin generate water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. With these five [phases of] qi harmoniously arranged, the Four Seasons proceed through them. The Five Phases are simply yin and yang ; yin and yang are simply the Supreme Polarity; the Supreme Polarity is fundamentally Non-polar. [Yet] in

6656-544: The case of the English word blackbird , composed of the adjective black and the noun bird . With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component stem. As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that even simple compounds made since the 18th century tend to be written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as Norwegian , Swedish , Danish , German , and Dutch . However, this

6760-409: The compound are marked, e.g. ʕabd-u servant- NOM l-lāh-i DEF -god- GEN ʕabd-u l-lāh-i servant-NOM DEF-god-GEN "servant of-the-god: the servant of God" Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. In German , extremely extendable compound words can be found in

6864-432: The core to this philosophy is their harmonious, relative and complementary natures. Yin and yang are reflections and originate from wuji to become taiji . The Daoist classic Zhuangzi introduced the taiji concept. One of the (ca. 3rd century BCE) "Inner Chapters" contrasts taiji (here translated as "zenith") with the liuji ( 六極 ). Liuji literally means "six ultimates; six cardinal directions ", but here it

6968-569: The discussion of a regulation on tendering of Danube steamboat shipping company captain hats") etc. According to several editions of the Guinness Book of World Records , the longest published German word has 79 letters and is Donau­dampfschiffahrts­elektrizitäten­hauptbetriebswerkbau­unterbeamten­gesellschaft ("Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Electric[ity] Maintenance Building of

7072-522: The early Edo period, Japanese writers such as Itō Jinsai , Kumazawa Banzan , and Nakae Tōju ranked the I Ching the greatest of the Confucian classics. Many writers attempted to use the I Ching to explain Western science in a Japanese framework . One writer, Shizuki Tadao , even attempted to employ Newton's laws of motion and the Copernican principle within an I Ching cosmology. This line of argument

7176-401: The early modern period, the I Ching took on renewed relevance in both Confucian and Daoist studies. The Kangxi Emperor was especially fond of the I Ching and ordered new interpretations of it. Qing dynasty scholars focused more intently on understanding pre-classical grammar, assisting the development of new philological approaches in the modern period. Like the other Chinese classics,

7280-470: The generation of the Five Phases, each one has its nature. The martial art tai chi draws heavily on Chinese philosophy, especially the concept of the taiji . The Chinese name of tai chi , taijiquan , literally translates as "taiji boxing" or "taiji fist". Early tai chi masters such as Yang Luchan promoted the connection between their martial art and the concept of the taiji . The twenty-fourth chapter of

7384-489: The head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching. English compound nouns can be spaced, hyphenated, or solid, and they sometimes change orthographically in that direction over time, reflecting a semantic identity that evolves from a mere collocation to something stronger in its solidification. This theme has been summarized in usage guides under the aphorism that "compound nouns tend to solidify as they age"; thus

7488-481: The hexagrams in King Wen order. The sinologist Michael Nylan describes the I Ching as the best-known Chinese book in the world. Eliot Weinberger wrote that it is the most "recognized" Chinese book. In East Asia, it is a foundational text for the Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions, while in the West, it attracted the attention of Enlightenment intellectuals and prominent literary and cultural figures. During

7592-478: The hexagrams in a format that resembles modern binary numbers , although he did not intend his arrangement to be used mathematically. This arrangement, sometimes called the binary sequence , later inspired Gottfried Leibniz . The 12th century Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, co-founder of the Cheng–Zhu school, criticized both of the Han dynasty lines of commentary on the I Ching , saying that they were one-sided. He developed

7696-598: The hexagrams were privately consulted to answer questions such as business, health, children, and determining lucky days. The most common form of divination with the I Ching in use today is a reconstruction of the method described in these histories, in the 300 BC Great Commentary , and later in the Huainanzi and the Lunheng . From the Great Commentary ' s description, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi reconstructed

7800-574: The hyphenated styling is used less now than it was in centuries past. In French , compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in chemin-de-fer 'railway', lit. 'road of iron', and moulin à vent 'windmill', lit. 'mill (that works)-by-means-of wind'. In Turkish , one way of forming compound nouns is as follows: yeldeğirmeni 'windmill' ( yel : wind, değirmen-i : mill-possessive); demiryolu 'railway' ( demir : iron, yol-u : road-possessive). Occasionally, two synonymous nouns can form

7904-409: The image and number work of Jing Fang , Yu Fan and Xun Shuang , is no longer extant. Only short fragments survive, from a Tang dynasty text called Zhou yi jijie . With the fall of the Han, I Ching scholarship was no longer organized into systematic schools. The most influential writer of this period was Wang Bi , who discarded the numerology of Han commentators and integrated the philosophy of

8008-774: The language of chemical compounds, where, in the cases of biochemistry and polymers, they can be practically unlimited in length, mostly because the German rule suggests combining all noun adjuncts with the noun as the last stem. German examples include Farb­fernsehgerät (color television set), Funk­fernbedienung (radio remote control), and the often quoted jocular word Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitänsmütze (originally only two Fs, Danube-Steamboat-Shipping Company captain['s] hat), which can of course be made even longer and even more absurd, e.g. Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitänsmützen­reinigungs­ausschreibungs­verordnungs­diskussionsanfang ("beginning of

8112-557: The lexeme familia (family). Conversely, in the Hebrew language compound, the word בֵּית סֵפֶר bet sefer (school), it is the head that is modified: the compound literally means "house-of book", with בַּיִת bayit (house) having entered the construct state to become בֵּית bet (house-of). This latter pattern is common throughout the Semitic languages , though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so that both parts of

8216-418: The line number, the line statements may make oracular or prognostic statements. Some line statements also contain poetry or references to historical events. Archaeological evidence shows that Zhou dynasty divination was grounded in cleromancy , the production of seemingly random numbers to determine divine intent. The Zhou yi provided a guide to cleromancy that used the stalks of the yarrow plant , but it

8320-419: The line statements, but it is also possible that the line statements were derived from the hexagram names. The line statements, which make up most of the book, are exceedingly cryptic. Each line begins with a word indicating the line number, "base, 2, 3, 4, 5, top", and either the number 6 for a broken line, or the number 9 for a whole line. Hexagrams 1 and 2 have an extra line statement, named yong . Following

8424-408: The metaphysical discussions in the I Ching . Zhou's opening lines are: Non-polar ( wuji ) and yet Supreme Polarity ( taiji )! The Supreme Polarity in activity generates yang ; yet at the limit of activity it is still. In stillness it generates yin ; yet at the limit of stillness it is also active. Activity and stillness alternate; each is the basis of the other. In distinguishing yin and yang ,

8528-424: The method of interpretation. The sequence generally pairs hexagrams with their upside-down equivalents; the eight hexagrams that do not change when turned upside-down, are instead paired with their inversions (exchanging yin and yang lines). Another order, found at Mawangdui in 1973, arranges the hexagrams into eight groups sharing the same upper trigram. But the oldest known manuscript, found in 1987 and now held by

8632-400: The most important of the Ten Wings is the Great Commentary ( Dazhuan ) or Xi ci , which dates to roughly 300 BC. The Great Commentary describes the I Ching as a microcosm of the universe and a symbolic description of the processes of change. By partaking in the spiritual experience of the I Ching , the Great Commentary states, the individual can understand the deeper patterns of

8736-406: The nadir but is not deep. It is prior to heaven and earth, but is not ancient; it is senior to high antiquity, but it is not old. The 2nd century BCE Huainanzi mentions a zhenren ("true person; perfected person") and the taiji that transcends categories like yin and yang , exemplified with the fusui and fangzhu mirrors. The fu-sui 夫煫 (burning mirror) gathers fire energy from

8840-429: The numbers obtained from the divination. Feng Youlan proposed that the word for 'changes' originally meant 'easy', as in a form of divination easier than the oracle bones , but there is little evidence for this. There is also an ancient folk etymology that sees the character for 'changes' as containing the sun and moon, the cycle of the day. Modern sinologists believe the character to be derived either from an image of

8944-426: The numinous and bright and to classify the myriad things". The Zhou yi itself does not contain this legend and indeed says nothing about its own origins. The Rites of Zhou , however, also claims that the hexagrams of the Zhou yi were derived from an initial set of eight trigrams. During the Han dynasty there were various opinions about the historical relationship between the trigrams and the hexagrams. Eventually,

9048-459: The opposite opinion, arguing that the I Ching had actually impeded scientific development by incorporating all physical knowledge into its metaphysics. However, with the advent of quantum mechanics , physicist Niels Bohr credited the yin and yang symbolism for providing inspiration of his interpretation of the new field, which disproved principles from older Western classical mechanics. The principle of complementarity heavily used concepts from

9152-469: The other. The distinction between the yin and yang is determined and the two forms (that is, the yin and yang) stand revealed. By the transformations of the yang and the union of the yin, the 4 directions then the 5 phases ( wuxing ) of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Taiji is, ometal ond then water. larity, revealing opposing features as in expanding/contracting, rising/falling, clockwise/ anticlockwise. However, taiji has sometimes been thought of as

9256-513: The plural (but in many cases they have been reanalyzed as plural forms, and a singular form has appeared). French and Italian have these same compounds with the noun in the singular form: Italian grattacielo 'skyscraper', French grille-pain 'toaster' (lit. 'toast bread'). This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected form: examples are spoilsport , killjoy , breakfast , cutthroat , pickpocket , dreadnought , and know-nothing . Also common in English

9360-690: The possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ when the first element is preceded by a cardinal number . A type of compound that is fairly common in the Indo-European languages is formed of a verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun. In Spanish , for example, such compounds consist of a verb conjugated for the second person singular imperative followed by a noun (singular or plural): e.g., rascacielos (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. 'scratch skies'), sacacorchos 'corkscrew' (lit. 'pull corks'), guardarropa 'wardrobe' (lit. 'store clothes'). These compounds are formally invariable in

9464-489: The processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing . The core of the I Ching is a Western Zhou divination text called the Changes of Zhou ( Chinese : 周易 ; pinyin : Zhōu yì ). Modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions ,

9568-482: The sage who reads it will see cosmological patterns and not despair in mere material difficulties. The Japanese word for 'metaphysics', keijijōgaku ( 形而上学 ) is derived from a statement found in the Great Commentary that "what is above form [ xíng ér shàng ] is called Tao ; what is under form is called a tool". The word has also been borrowed into Korean and re-borrowed back into Chinese. The Ten Wings were traditionally attributed to Confucius , possibly based on

9672-609: The standard edition of the I Ching through the Song dynasty . By the 11th century, the I Ching was being read as a work of intricate philosophy, as a jumping-off point for examining great metaphysical questions and ethical issues. Cheng Yi , patriarch of the Neo-Confucian Cheng–Zhu school , read the I Ching as a guide to moral perfection. He described the text as a way to for ministers to form honest political factions, root out corruption, and solve problems in government. The contemporary scholar Shao Yong rearranged

9776-500: The sun emerging from clouds, or from the content of a vessel being changed into another. The Zhou yi was traditionally ascribed to the Zhou cultural heroes King Wen of Zhou and the Duke of Zhou , and was also associated with the legendary world ruler Fuxi . According to the canonical Great Commentary , Fuxi observed the patterns of the world and created the eight trigrams ( 八卦 ; bāguà ), "in order to become thoroughly conversant with

9880-429: The sun; the fang-chu 方諸 (moon mirror) gathers dew from the moon. What are [contained] between Heaven and Earth, even an expert calculator cannot compute their number. Thus, though the hand can handle and examine extremely small things, it cannot lay hold of the brightness [of the sun and moon]. Were it within the grasp of one's hand (within one's power) to gather [things within] one category from

9984-559: The text, are sometimes called the "modernist school". The I Ching has been translated into Western languages dozens of times. The earliest published complete translation of the I Ching into a Western language was a Latin translation done in the 1730s by the French Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste Régis and his companions that was published in Germany in the 1830s. Historically, the most influential Western-language I Ching translation

10088-408: The two primary forces. The two primary forces generate the four images. The four images generate the eight trigrams. The eight trigrams determine good fortune and misfortune. Good fortune and misfortune create the great field of action. This sequence of powers of two includes taiji → yin and yang (two polarities) → Sixiang ( Four Symbols ) → Bagua (eight trigrams). The fundamental postulate

10192-501: The universe. Among other subjects, it explains how the eight trigrams proceeded from the eternal oneness of the universe through three bifurcations . The other Wings provide different perspectives on essentially the same viewpoint, giving ancient, cosmic authority to the I Ching . For example, the Wenyan provides a moral interpretation that parallels the first two hexagrams, 乾 ( qián ) and 坤 ( kūn ), with Heaven and Earth, and

10296-465: The word would most likely be divided in two: sökintervalls­inställningar för rörelse­uppskattning – "search range settings for motion estimation". A common semantic classification of compounds yields four types: An endocentric compound ( tatpuruṣa in the Sanskrit tradition) consists of a head , i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example,

10400-407: Was Richard Wilhelm 's 1923 German translation, which was translated into English in 1950 by Cary Baynes . Although Thomas McClatchie and James Legge had both translated the text into English already in the 19th century, while Paul-Louis-Félix Philastre and Charles de Harlez had both translated it in the same period into French, the text gained significant traction during the counterculture of

10504-594: Was also used for the verb 'divine' in the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty , which preceded the Zhou. It also carried meanings of being or making upright or correct, and was defined by the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan as "to enquire into the correctness" of a proposed activity. The names of the hexagrams are usually words that appear in their respective line statements, but in five cases (2, 9, 26, 61, and 63) an unrelated character of unclear purpose appears. The hexagram names could have been chosen arbitrarily from

10608-455: Was criticized by Georg Friedrich Hegel , who proclaimed that binary system and Chinese characters were "empty forms" that could not articulate spoken words with the clarity of the Western alphabet . In their commentary, I Ching hexagrams and Chinese characters were conflated into a single foreign idea, sparking a dialogue on Western philosophical questions such as universality and the nature of communication. The usage of binary in relation to

10712-471: Was later taken up in China by the Qing politician Zhang Zhidong . Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , who was corresponding with Jesuits in China , wrote the first European commentary on the I Ching in 1703. He argued that it proved the universality of binary numbers and theism , since the broken lines, the "0" or "nothingness", cannot become solid lines, the "1" or "oneness", without the intervention of God . This

10816-502: Was more scholarly and hierarchical, and focused on the moral content of the text, providing the basis for the School of Meanings and Principles. The New Text scholars distributed alternate versions of the text and freely integrated non-canonical commentaries into their work, as well as propagating alternate systems of divination such as the Taixuanjing . Most of this early commentary, such as

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