Talk:I Ching
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Older discussion is in Talk archive 1
This entry has won the August 2004 West Dakota Prize for successfully employing the expression "legend states" in a complete sentence.
This entry is one of only seventeen that have won the March 2005 West Dakota Prize for successfully employing the expression "legend states" in a complete sentence. --Wetman 08:22, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The whole intent of the "Leibniz fallacy" portion is wrong. First of all, the binary arrangement was developed by the famous Chinese philosopher Shao Yung (c. the 11th century), and he showed it in two formats, a circle and a rectangular block. He was heavily involved in mathematical/numerical analysis, and in particular in I Ching divination using mathematical means. So, his arrangement was NOT just plucked out thin air!
Second, while I have not read the Leibniz source material, even as the text here states, "He takes the layout of the combinatorial excercise found in the hexagrams to represent binary sequences...". Well, in fact, they ARE binary sequences, but this text implies that they are not.
The text goes on to say, "In this respect Leibniz was wrong: the hexagrams do not represent numbers, they are merely the result of the task of combining two discrete elements, and the resulting combinations does not represent any numbers at all, least of all the binary numeral system." Once again, this is WRONG! Mathematics is not something apart from the world; it is intrisic to the world. Combinatorial methods ARE part and parcel of mathematics. The combinatorial process used DOES create a binary sequence, and Shao Yung deserves mention for creating it.
Was Shao the first to create a binary sequence? Probably not, but he clearly did show he understood its origin. Did he understand that those binary values could be used in addition and other mathematical processes? There is no evidence of that, so clearly his understanding was limited.
So, did Shao Yung intend the arrangements to represent actual binary numbers? I seriously doubt it. However, they ARE a valid means of creating (and representing) binary numbers, and thus Leibniz was correct in pointing out that they are a representation of the binary numbers 0 thorugh 63!
Thus, I will amend the entry.
-- Taomaster
For those interested, my primary reference is I Ching, The Classic Chinese Oracle Of Change by Rudolf Ritsema and Stephen Karcher of the Eranos I Ching Project, an astonishingly complete translation with loads of cross-reference material. Published by Element Books, 1-85230-669-6 is the ISBN code. -- Bignose
- Another reference could be the famous Wilhelm's translation. See some exerpts (http://afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wengu.php?l=Yijing) of his introduction (more details in French version). gbog 16:18, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Some web links:
A Chinese government site showing some turtle shell oracles and early chinese writings (http://www.anyang.gov.cn/oracle/en/oracle.htm)
more (http://www.fortunecity.com/business/influence/1805/the_clan_of_fu_hsi.htm)
- Don't wait for someone else to do it. Be bold in updating pages. -- Bignose
- I didn't plan to add these links to the article itself because I feel that these are not directly related to I Ching. However these articles would be useful resource for you if you plan to write more on the topic of divination.
Why is it necessary for each hexagram to have its own page? Are (or can) each of these pages be made into actual encyclopedia articles? Or will they forever only be stub definitions and therefore not encyclopedia articles? --mav
- Yes, the text of the "book" that is the I Ching comprises the text associated with each hexagram, and the commentaries thereon that have been written. The text is considerably dense, and each hexagram does indeed warrant its own article. -- Bignose
OK - Why was the other talk in this page deleted? --mav 21:56 Aug 21, 2002 (PDT)
- I believe the issues they discussed have been resolved many months ago. -- Bignose
- Then the correct thing to do is to archive the old talk, not delete it. --mav
- Is there some reason the normal article histories aren't sufficient archive for old resolved talk text? --LDC
- Because that talk is non-obvious and becomes lost. I vote for making talk archives easier to make by allowing for subpage functionality for talk pages (would also be nice for user pages too). --mav
- If there's talk you think is relevant to keep around, you can certainly put it on Talk:I Ching/Archive, or wherever. I have no objection, and you don't need any software features. Just put links to the archives here and links back there. I just don't think that's the most common case. I think generally when there's an argument about what should be on a page, people talk about it and resolve the issue, after which the discussion is just yesterday's news and should generally be deleted. But if someone wants to keep it around, nothing is stopping them. --LDC
- That sounds like you're asking for a feature Wikipedia doesn't yet have. I'm not sure what you want the resolution to be in this instance; is there some other form of archival you have in mind? (It may be best to demonstrate by archiving the deleted discussions in a manner you see fit.) -- User:Bignose
Having left room for exposition on each hexagram, of course, I'm sad to say that I only have translations of the I Ching, and not the original text itself. Those translations are naturally copyrighted, and the primary source (the Element book cited at the top of this talk page) is very recent and will not pass into public domain for nearly a century; this is annoying because it is by far the clearest English translation I've seen of the (very obscure) Chinese text. An alternative, of course, is to write a lot of original text based on the translations available. -- Bignose
- A few minutes of Google-searching turned up a copy of a 19th-century translation (http://www.sacred-texts.com/ich/) which appears to be public domain. Not necessarily the best, but it's something. (Of course, remember what Wikipedia is not -- there's little point in copying the text wholesale when you can just link. On the other hand, if you're going to include commentary, citing large chunks of the text may be justified.) --Brion
One thing I intend to do (unless someone beats me to it) is to compose images of each of the 64 hexagrams to accompany the text, which Unicode doesn't provide (though I'm still amazed that the eight trigrams are provided in Unicode). Now all I have to do is figure out how Wikipedia's image system works :-) -- Bignose
- Phew! Done now. 64 hexagrams created, thanks to ImageMagick and some tricky shell scripting. I've uploaded 70x70 pixel images for each hexagram, and added them to the hexagram pages. I have also created 24x24 pixel thumbnails, if anyone thinks they might be useful (say, on the main article page)? -- Bignose
- Thanks, Bignose. It really helps those who don't wish to twist their neckbones or can't risk it due to an unforgiving skeleton. I think posting the 24x24's on the main article page would be great too. --Menchi 04:48 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)
- I liked the graphics. What I don't understand is why I can read the Chinese characters on those pages with my browser, but not the trigrams.
- [ http://zh.wikipedia.org displays latin characters, not Chinese ones in my browser, which is something else I don't understand. ]
- -- User:12.235.178.233 Feb 21, 2003
Chinese Punctuation Marks for Book Title
『』 is actually quotation marks for quoting somebody's saying, “”. Book title marks (what in English rendered as italicization or underlining) are 《》. Incidentally, chapter marks (what in English would be quotation marks) are 〈〉. -- Menchi 04:42 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)
- Yes but these are used in Chinese text, to help distinguish between text itself and book's names. I'm not convinced that those marks are useful in our context and I propose to remove them.gbog 16:18, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Um... What are these English names for the hexagrams like 'Force' and 'Field'? They seem to be fairly random to me, and probably not widely accepted? Where do these words come from? I mean, are they translated from something?
I don't think that scholars agree exactly on the meanings (and even the names) of the hexagrams...
Edededed 08:54, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Navigation Tables?
I've been adding tables that look like:
| Previous: ||:||| Treading (履 lǚ) | I Ching | Next: :::||| Obstruction (否 pǐ) |
to the first few hexagrams, to improve navigation. What do people think about this? Should the English names be included since the meanings of the hexagrams are disputed? Kevin Saff 16:34, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Sequences?
Would it be worth going in to the various different sequences that exist? The reason I ask is that I think the Fu Xi sequence is worthy of mention in the Binary numeral system entry as the earliest known use of a binary sequence. See also my comment on Talk:binary numeral system. Please excuse my timidity, I've never been involved in editing before. Redwards2 16:00, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I think it worth it. But I would like this article to be split in parts and want to know what other wikipedians think. I would separate and develop those topics :
- Trigrams or Trigram (now redirects to I Ching) with an explained list of Trigrams and both sequences.
- Hexagrams or Hexagram (now is a kind of disamb) with this long list of hexagrams and a square table showing how they are drawing a 'matrix'.
- Divination with I Ching with those methods fully described.
- I'm unsure on what those pages titles should be so please give your opinions. I'd like also to expand topics like 'influences of I Ching on Chinese thought', 'mathematical properties',... gbog 05:34, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)
I found a mistake
It was refined over time and I Ching was completed around the time of Han Wu Di
I Ching was already completed before Confucius. But, Confucius gave more explanation or extended it into Philosophy. Maybe, the more explanation of I Ching appeared during Han Wu Di is another reason.
It is said, the first emperor of Zhou dynasty developed trigrams (八卦 bā gła) into 64 Hexagrams. This is the completion of I Ching. The followings were all the explanation, because of the deep of I Ching.