PrefaceThis study began in 1968 when I was introduced to the I Ching and became fascinated by the sophistication of abstract thinking manifest so early in the evolution of civilization. Together with the calendar, the zodiac, the arts of divination, and writing, the origins of number words, symbols, and manipulations comprise our heritage of the first mental inventions of mankind, the study of which may be called the archeology of wisdom. Inspired by great pioneers of this scholarly discipline, such as Cyril Fagan, Joseph Needham, David Diringer, Otto Neugebauer, and Karl Menninger, I have endeavored to discover the earliest origins of mathematical thinking, using modern mathematics as a tool. In the case of the independent early culture of China, the I Ching and the Honan Oracle Bones are the primary sources. The results of these studies, concerning chiefly the number symbols of the I Ching, are presented in this book. The principal question--which has always excited the greatest possible curiosity among thinking people--remains unanswered: whence came, so suddenly, such highly evolved mental art? As in the case of other inventions, especially the writing systems, divinatory procedures, calendrical sciences, and psychological theories of early man, the enigma will continue to gnaw on our curiosity until decades of inspired archeological work finds a clue, if ever.The present work is organized in three more-or-less independent parts. The first is devoted to the early history of Chinese culture, and the milieu in which the I Ching emerged. The second is a collection of mathematical commentaries on the yarrow oracle and the symbols of the I Ching. The third presents my tentative conclusions on the yarrow oracle and the divinatory use of the trigrams and hexagrams, including both their origins, and suggestions for their utilization in the present, for meditation or experiments of prognostication. In brief, my thesis is that the yarrow oracle developed independently, at least four thousand years ago, in Western China. The original text of the I Ching consisted of the Kua alone: eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams, carved on bamboo tablets. From this "Chinese Tarot" derived the games of Go, chess, Mah Jhong, Dominoes, the traditional diagrams called Lo Shu and Ho T'u, the I Ching and related texts, the stick numbers and calculating boards of Chinese arithmetic, the Yin-Yang theory of symbolic correspondencies, and the elaborate numerology of the Taoists. The Tarot of Mesopotamia may also be a derivative of the Kua, but it is very improbable that the Kua derived from the Tarot. The sudden emergence of highly evolved forms amid primitive peoples has sponsored such theories of origin as: lost earthly civilizations (Mu, Lemuria, Atlantis), extraterrestrial cultures (distant solar systems, UFOs), extraphysical sources (collective unconscious, archetypal symbols, the harmony of nature, the Akashic record, intelligent immortals in the astral plane), etc. These theories, which replace mystery with mystery, at least emphasize the degree of bewilderment caused by the sudden emergence of "the secret ancient wisdom of man." And it is my sincere hope that this volume may stimulate further efforts, using the full power of our present intellectual achivements to pursue the archeology of wisdom, without the cultural biases--such as the Western mass phobia for paranormal phenomena like prognostication and telepathy--which have castrated so many previous studies.
Ralph Abraham
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