REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

I Ching

Foreword
by Carl Gustav Jung

HTML Edition by Dan Baruth

Since I am not a sinologue, a foreword to the Book of Changes from my hand must be a testimonial of my individual experience with this great and singular book. It also affords me a welcome opportunity to pay tribute again to the memory of my late friend, Richard Wilhelm. He himself was profoundly aware of the cultural significance of his translation of the I Ching, a version unrivaled in the West.

If the meaning of the Book of Changes were easy to grasp, the work would need no foreword. But this is far from being the case, for there is so much that is obscure about it that Western scholars have tended to dispose of it as a collection of "magic spells," either too abstruse to be intelligible, or of no value whatsoever. Legge's translation of the I Ching, up to now the only version available in English, has done little to make the work accessible to Western minds.^[1]Wilhelm, however, has made every effort to open the way to an understanding of the symbolism of the text. He was in a position to do this because he himself was taught the philosophy and the use of the I Ching by the venerable sage Lao Nai-hsüan; moreover, he had over a period of many years put the peculiar technique of the oracle into practice. His grasp of the living meaning of the text gives his version of the I Ching a depth of perspective that an exclusively academic knowledge of Chinese philosophy could never provide.

I am greatly indebted to Wilhelm for the light he has thrown upon the complicated problem of the I Ching, and for insight as regards its practical application as well. For more than thirty years I have interested myself in this oracle technique, or method of exploring the unconscious, for it has seemed to me of uncommon significance. I was already fairly familiar with the I Ching when I first met Wilhelm in the early nineteen twenties; he confirmed for me then what I already knew, and taught me many things more.

I do not know Chinese and have never been in China. I can assure my reader that it is not altogether easy to find the right access to this monument of Chinese thought, which departs so completely from our ways of thinking. In order to understand what such a book is all about, it is imperative to cast off certain prejudices of the Western mind. it is a curious fact that such a gifted and intelligent people as the Chinese has never developed what we call science. Our science, however, is based upon the principle of causality, and causality is considered to be an axiomatic truth. But a great change in our standpoint is setting in. What Kant's Critique of Pure Reason failed to do, is being accomplished by modern physics. The axioms of causality are being shaken to their foundations: we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus must necessarily allow for exceptions. We have not sufficiently taken into account as yet that we need the laboratory with its incisive restrictions in order to demonstrate the invariable validity of natural law. If we leave things to nature, we see a very different picture: every process is partially or totally interfered with by chance, so much so that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely conforming to specific laws is almost an exception.

The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed. We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance. Theoretical considerations of cause and effect often look pale and dusty in comparison to the practical results of chance. It is all very well to say that the crystal of quartz is a hexagonal prism. The statement is quite true in so far as an ideal crystal is envisaged. But in nature one finds no two crystals exactly alike, although all are unmistakably hexagonal. The actual form, however, seems to appeal more to the Chinese sage than the ideal one. The jumble of natural laws constituting empirical reality holds more significance for him than a causal explanation of events that, moreover, must usually be separated from one another in order to be properly dealt with.

The manner in which the I Ching tends to look upon reality seems to disfavor our causalistic procedures. The moment under actual observation appears to the ancient Chinese view more of a chance hit than a clearly defined result of concurring causal chain processes. The matter of interest seems to be the configuration formed by chance events in the moment of observation, and not at all the hypothetical reasons that seemingly account for the coincidence. While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment.

Thus it happens that when one throws the three coins, or counts through the forty-nine yarrow stalks, these chance details enter into the picture of the moment of observation and form a part of it -- a part that is insiguificant to us, yet most meaningful to the Chinese mind. With us it would be a banal and almost meaningless statement (at least on the face of it) to say that whatever happens in a given moment possesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment. This is not an abstract argument but a very practical one. There are certain connoisseurs who can tell you merely from the appearance, taste, and behavior of a wine the site of its vineyard and the year of its origin. There are antiquarians who with almost uncanny accuracy will name the time and place of origin and the maker of an objet d'art or piece of furniture on merely looking at it. And there are even astrologers who can tell you, without any previous knowledge of your nativity, what the position of sun and moon was and what zodiacal sign rose above the horizon in the moment of your birth. In the face of such facts, it must be admitted that moments can leave long-lasting traces.

In other words, whoever invented the I Ching was convinced that the hexagram worked out in a certain moment coincided with the latter in quality no less than in time. To him the hexagram was the exponent of the moment in which it was cast -- even more so than the hours of the clock or the divisions of the calendar could be -- inasmuch as the hexagram was understood to be an indicator of the essential situation prevailing in the moment of its origin.

This assumption involves a certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity,^[2] a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality. Since the latter is a merely statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.

The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure. The microphysical event includes the observer just as much as the reality underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i.e., psychic conditions in the totality of the momentary situation. Just as causality describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind deals with the coincidence of events. The causal point of view tells us a dramatic story about how D came into existence: it took its origin from C, which existed before D, and C in its turn had a father, B, etc. The synchronistic view on the other hand tries to produce an equally meaningful picture of coincidence. How does it happen that A', B', C', D', etc., appear all in the same moment and in the same place? It happens in the first place because the physical events A' and B' are of the same quality as the psychic events C' and D', and further because all are the exponents of one and the same momentary situation. The situation is assumed to represent a legible or understandable picture.

Now the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching are the instrument by which the meaning of sixty-four different yet typical situations can be determined. These interpretations are equivalent to causal explanations. Causal connection is statistically necessary and can therefore be subjected to experiment. Inasmuch as situations are unique and cannot be repeated, experimenting with synchronicity seems to be impossible under ordinary conditions.^[3] In the I Ching, the only criterion of the validity of synchronicity is the observer's opinion that the text of the hexagram amounts to a true rendering of his psychic condition. It is assumed that the fall of the coins or the result of the division of the bundle of yarrow stalks is what it necessarily must be in a given "situation," inasmuch as anything happening in that moment belongs to it as an indispensable part of the picture. If a handful of matches is thrown to the floor, they form the pattern characteristic of that moment. But such an obvious truth as this reveals its meaningful nature only if it is possible to read the pattern and to verify its interpretation, partly by the observer's knowledge of the subjective and objective situation, partly by the character of subsequent events. It is obviously not a procedure that appeals to a critical mind used to experimental verification of facts or to factual evidence. But for someone who likes to look at the world at the angle from which ancient China saw it, the I Ching may have some attraction.

My argument as outlined above has of course never entered a Chinese mind. On the contrary, according to the old tradition, it is "spiritual agencies," acting in a mysterious way, that make the yarrow stalks give a meaningful answer.^[4] These powers form, as it were, the living soul of the book. As the latter is thus a sort of animated being, the tradition assumes that one can put questions to the I Ching and expect to receive intelligent answers. Thus it occurred to me that it might interest the uninitiated reader to see the I Ching at work. For this purpose I made an experiment strictly in accordance with the Chinese conception: I personified the book in a sense, asking its judgment about its present situation, i.e., my intention to present it to the Western mind.

Although this procedure is well within the premises of Taoist philosophy, it appears exceedingly odd to us. However, not even the strangeness of insane delusions or of primitive superstition has ever shocked me. I have always tried to remain unbiased and curious -- rerum novarum cupidus. Why not venture a dialogue with an ancient book that purports to be animated? There can be no harm in it, and the reader may watch a psychological procedure that has been carried out time and again throughout the millennia of Chinese civilization, representing to a Confucius or a Lao-tse both a supreme expression of spiritual authority and a philosophical enigma. I made use of the coin method, and the answer obtained was hexagram 50, Ting, THE CALDRON.

In accordance with the way my question was phrased, the text of the hexagram must be regarded as though the I Ching itself were the speaking person. Thus it describes itself as a caldron, that is, as a ritual vessel containing cooked food. Here the food is to be understood as spiritual nourishment. Wilhelm says about this:

The ting, as a utensil pertaining to a refined civilization, suggests the fostering and nourishing of able men, which redounded to the benefit of the state. . . . Here we see civilization as it reaches its culmination in religion. The ting serves in offering sacrifice to God. . . . The supreme revelation of God appears in prophets and holy men. To venerate them is true veneration of God. The will of God, as revealed through them, should he accepted in humility.

Keeping to our hypothesis, we must conclude that the I Ching is here testifying concerning itself.

When any of the lines of a given hexagram have the value of six or nine, it means that they are specially emphasized and hence important in the interpretation.^[5] In my hexagram the "spiritual agencies" have given the emphasis of a nine to the lines in the second and in the third place. The text says:

 

Nine in the second place means:
There is food in the ting.
My comrades are envious,
But they cannot harm me.
Good fortune.

Read more at iging

菜根譚 / Tending the Roots of Wisdom

 

               Uploaded by tomorallen on Dec 7, 2006

Tending the Roots of Wisdom was written by Hong Yingming during the Wanli reign period (1573-1620) of the Ming Dynasty. Hong Yingming adopted the Confucian virtue of "self-cultivation" with the Taoist and Buddhist doctrine of "returning to simplicity and the unadorned truth". These two appellations thread together and fuse the three major trends of traditional Chinese thought - Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Tending the Roots of Wisdom is filled with precepts stressing self-cultivation.

              

Zen of Vegetable Roots "Caigentan"

Hold your principles as firm as the nine Dings of Taishan, 
then blame shall not fall upon you. 
Treat everything as fallen petals in flowing water. 
Let them disappear and you will find fun.

 

People know how to read a book with words but not a book without words.  People know how to play a stringed instrument, but not one without strings. 

If you only know how to recognize something practical and nothing spiritual, how can you appreciate the wonders of music and books.

Asiawind

文章翻译：“You set a good example:” A Red Guard apology

He explained why he was more able to repent than Red Guards who had beaten people and why he dared to be different from them.  Whether or not to apologize is a major question.   How you set the implied meaning of the apology is also a major question.

“You set a good example:” A Red Guard apology
By Wang Youqin (王友琴)

I’ve seen a few letters recently that have to do with things which happened 44 years ago.  Several middle school students who were Red Guards in 1966 wrote them to apologize to the teachers they “struggled against” at the time.  Since I am a researcher of history, I thought it would be a good idea to write about it and let the world know. 

One side of the story concerns the teacher Cheng Bi (程璧) who is 86 this year.  She was in charge of Beijing Foreign Languages School during the Cultural Revolution, and just like so many others in education, Ms. Cheng first had her responsibilities revoked and later was imprisoned in the school.  She suffered insults and was savagely beaten.  They shaved half of her scalp to give a “yin-yang head.”

I conducted an investigation on this.  In August of 1966, the Red Guards from Beijing Foreign Languages School beat to death a kindergarten worker named Liu Guilan (刘桂兰) in the auditorium with wooden sticks, belts, and water pipes.  Those under persecution were called “demons and monsters” [牛鬼蛇神] back then and were the ones forced to carry her body away.  Ms. Cheng and Director of Instruction Yao Shuxi (姚淑禧) each grabbed a leg and dragged her away.  Yao Shuxi was beaten many times herself.  One night five different groups of Red Guards attacked her.  She was found in the ladies latrine with a rope around her neck as she dangled from a sewer pipe after “having committed suicide.” 

Another side of the story concerns eight Red Guards from Beijing Foreign Languages School in 1966.  They were teenagers 44 years ago, so now they are all about 60.  They have apologized to Ms. Cheng Bi and repented of the violence and persecution they perpetrated that year. 

A massive wave of violence started by the Red Guards in Beijing swept throughout the country in August of 1966.  They beat 1772 people to death in in Beijing alone (according to a December 20, 1980 report in Beijing Daily).  The number of people who suffered and the savagery which was used was unprecedented.  The victims were [politically] rehabilitated around 1979 and families of the deceased received 420 yuan in “compensation.”  What are those perpetrators of the violence from that year thinking now?  Do they admit to their failures?  Are they willing to apologize to the victims?  Can they repent?  Many people aren’t so sure. 

I have not investigated these people myself, so I have no way of knowing how representative the eight who apologized are in comparison to the whole population of Red Guards.  However, I am convinced that this action is worthy of praise. 

The first letter was written by Shen Xiaoke (申小珂):

Read more at infzm

Teahouse and truths about life

Visitors relax at the Fuquan Teahouse and terrace on the grounds of Yongfu Monastery. (Photo: Shanghai Daily)

BEIJING, April 27 -- A piece of fallen wood is not dead. "String" it, and its life springs back in the form of music. I had heard the Buddhist expression ku mu feng chun (spring breezes life back into withered wood) in archaic Chinese literature, but never before had I understood melodies from a fallen piece of wood with strings as a living thing.

I gained this enlightening perception of life in a trip last month to a Buddhist monastery in the wooded hills in Hangzhou, a bucolic city just about an hour from Shanghai by bullet train.

My wife and I were taking a leisurely walk and appreciating the scenery, as we often do in Hangzhou, when we chanced upon a lecture on guqin music and Buddhism in the Pathaka Hall of Yongfu Monastery.

It was almost dusk when we found ourselves in this graceful Buddhist music hall, where master Nian Shun happened to be playing guqin, a seven-stringed traditional instrument. The performance was part of a lecture to visiting scholars of Buddhism from Shanghai.

Read more at XINHUA

Traditional China and Anarchism

Introduction by Leonard P. Liggio

Professor Rubinstein's fine summary of traditional Chinese political concepts suggests an important lesson for libertarians.

In Chinese thought the anarchist ideas were applied within a statist structure; there had been no attempt to overthrow the state but merely to introduce anarchist practices to modify and improve the situation. The result was oppressive; anarchist ideas cannot be applied while the state system continues in existence, In fact, it may be that the application of anarchist ideas within a statist structure can only lead to worse oppression.

Read more at Ludwig von Mises Institute

How democracy may come to China

Beijing, China (CNN) -- "Why do you assume that we want Western democracy?" The question was put by an English-speaking Chinese woman, a graduate of an American university, over an elegant dinner served in a private dining room at an expensive restaurant in the most fashionable neighborhood of Beijing.

It's a grim ironic paradox of modern China: China's vast new middle class -- not to mention its estimated 600,000 millionaires -- look to one-party rule by Mao Zedong's communists as the best protectors of private property.

That middle class has a lot to protect: handsome new suburban villas, opulent new apartments (they are just putting the finishing touches on a Four Seasons condominium tower), 4 million cars in Beijing alone.

The middle class also has a lot to fear. After I said good night to my democracy-skeptical acquaintance, I stepped into the main room of the restaurant. It had emptied out, and the kitchen staff were settling down to a late-evening meal: steamed rice and a watery cabbage stew, ladled into Tupperware tubs.

Read more at CNN

Mao made a 'Soviet Republic,' became China, but failed at being God

Mao, a son of a fairly prosperous farm-owner, was born in 1893. On some of his photographs, Mao has an almost childlike face. The most heinous cruelty comes not from those who look like movie villains, but from those who look like children watching the slaughter of cattle on their father's farm.

Mao finished school in 1918, and in 1917, when Lenin and his gang were identifying themselves with Russia, Mao was 24 years old. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin transformed himself into Lenin, only with a different exterior.

In 1927, Kuomintang was still Mao's "ally," but in 1931 Mao proclaimed China to be a "soviet republic," and in 1949 he routed Kuomintang (in a "civil war") and became the Lenin and then the Stalin of China.

How did Mao perceive all this? After he had become China, his first trip abroad was to Russia (that is, to Stalin) to negotiate a "friendship treaty" with Stalin — Russia. This shows how well Mao was disposed to Stalin — Russia, who did not criticize Mao for his orgy of mass murder.

Well, what's the fuss about? When Mao proclaimed a "Soviet republic" in China, he did not know, nor did many Chinese, that the Russian word "soviet" means "advice." Nor did or do many Chinese know that in Latin the word "republic" means the "thing" of "public." The word "public" was known outside Rome and other countries speaking Latin, but this was not its meaning in Mao's "Soviet republic" — or in the "People's Republic of China" Mao proclaimed in 1949.

Read more at World Tribune

China Will Get Democracy

Expect it by 2030, says Chatham House senior fellow Kerry Brown. But in the short-term, things might get a little rough.

Whilst the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are all in agreement that Iran shouldn’t be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, there have been clear differences between China and others on how to proceed. Do you see China eventually backing tougher action, and how much of an impact are the current differences having on ties with the US?

I think China’s in a difficult position in some ways because it’s under a lot of diplomatic pressure from the United States to support sanctions and doesn’t want to alienate the US too much. On the other hand, it gets a huge amount of energy from Iran, and it has just made some big investments there in some of its oil fields. Energy is a big priority for the Chinese government and it doesn’t want to alienate a big supplier. This means it has pretty clear political interests with the United States, but pretty clear economic interests with Iran. It’s torn between the ‘head’ of economy and the ‘heart’ of politics.

I think it also doesn’t like to be isolated politically, and if Russia, as another member of the Permanent Five (members of the UN Security Council), is also going to support sanctions, which it seems to hint at, then my hunch is China will want to keep a low profile and not be dragged in. Maybe it will abstain rather than exercising its veto power.

So I think China will leave it until the last moment before it declares its hand, and Iran will try and tempt it into a position in which China is the leader of some sort of developing world group that breaks with America. But at the end of the day, this isn’t anywhere near as enticing as staying on side with the Americans on this and getting benefits elsewhere.

Read more at The Diolomat

Growing calls for reform in China

Communist Party of China and state leaders Hu Jintao (centre), Wu Bangguo (right) and Wen Jiabao (left) arrive for the opening meeting of the third Session of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

Focus on rural-urban income disparities

More than 5,000 political representatives from every corner of China descended on Beijing this week for the start of the most important annual political exercise — the meetings of its two most powerful political bodies.

On Wednesday, the 2,252-member Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body comprising different political groups besides the ruling Communist Party, began its annual session reviewing the government's work in the past year. The more powerful National People's Congress (NPC), a 2,981-member legislative body which approves and passes many of the major laws, begins its session on Friday.

The liang hui or “two sessions”, as they are commonly referred to in China, are an annual two-week-long ritual that brings together political representatives from all of China's 33 provinces and special administrative regions and 55 minority groups.

In theory, their role is to review the progress of different government departments and decide policies for the year ahead. But in practice, the mandate and space the two bodies actually have to debate and review government policies is somewhat unclear and has itself become a subject of much debate among Chinese scholars.

View complete article at The Hindu.

If Isaac Newton had to be born, why was he not a Chinese?

Newton, Needham and Hsu

Joseph Needham,

will be remembered for his massive achievement embodied in the continuing Science and Civilisation in China series, the successive parts of which have been published by Cambridge University Press since 1954. This great work is planned as a history of science, technology and medicine in China, seen in its fullest social and intellectual context, and illuminated by a deep and sympathetic understanding of the cultures of both East and West.

Isaac Newton,

Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727), mathematician and physicist, one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time. Born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, where he attended school, he entered Cambridge University in 1661; he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1667, and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669. He remained at the university, lecturing in most years, until 1696. Of these Cambridge years, in which Newton was at the height of his creative power, he singled out 1665-1666 (spent largely in Lincolnshire because of plague in Cambridge) as "the prime of my age for invention". During two to three years of intense mental effort he prepared Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) commonly known as the Principia, although this was not published until 1687.

Isaac Newton, Joseph Needham and Kenneth J. Hsu.

Newton's only part in the story is that he's considered to be the greatest scientific mind the world has ever known - and he was European.

Needham, widely acknowledged and acclaimed as the pre-eminent western scholar on China's contributions to science, early on posed a question and proceeded to try to answer it.

He, perhaps unwittingly, created the question, but he never answered it.

You've heard of Newton, of course.  Maybe, if you are a sinophile, you are familiar with Needham. This brings us to Professor Kenneth J. Hsu.

Who is he?

Kenneth J. Hsu ，is a scientist and geologist. He was born in Nanjing, China in 1929. He studied at the National Central University, Ohio State University, and University of California, Los Angeles. Hsu has been working with Swiss Federal Institute of Technology since 1963. He has received many prestigious awards including the Twenhofel Medal, Wollaston Medal and Penrose Medal.

Newton's genius (race).

Needham's question: "why was it that despite the immense achievements of traditional China it had been in Europe and not in China that the scientific and industrial revolutions occurred?" 

Hsu's answer -

"why Isaac Newton was not a Chinese." 

China has a long tradition of scholarship, and the Chinese have contributed much to science and technology: Joseph Needharn has written more than a dozen volumes to document that China has been much more effective than the Europeans in finding out about nature and using their knowledge of nature to benefit mankind for 14 centuries before the scientific revolution. Nevertheless this revolution occurred in the "backward" Europe. Paul Feyerabend, a philosopher of science, wrote to me and suggested that "deficient, not good, knowledge led to better knowledge", and he talked about an idiosyncrasy in the historicity of scientific revolution. Was Isaac Newton an idiosyncrasy in the intellectual history of mankind, or was he an inevitability? If Isaac Newton had to be born, why was he not a Chinese? 

The question has been a favorite theme for speculation by historians of science. I am not a historian, and cannot hope to approach the problem, with the digitized-sequencing form of logic, like a scholarly historian. I am, however, a scientist, and I grew up in China I learned science in Chinese high school and university before coming to the West as a young man of 19, and I have been working in China with Chinese scientists during the last 15 years. My self-knowledge and my personal observations led me to recognize some patterns. I venture to conclude on the basis of pattern-recognition that Isaac Newton was not a Chinese, because the historicity of Chinese culture and the idiosyncrasy of Chinese linguistic development have served to discourage the creativity which gave us the modem science.

SNIP

With the diversity of written languages, Europeans could think freely and become rebellious to the central authority who had dictated in Latin. Thomas Aquinas may have been the greatest scholar of the Medieval Europe, but he was not an Englishman, and Francis Bacon did not suffer from a sense of betrayal when he proposed a different way of searching for truth. Nor did Copernicus worry about being sacrilegious when he proposed a theory of planetary motion completely different from that of Ptolemy. In China, however, there could be no escape. Through an idiosyncrasy in history, having adopted a different logic in constructing their writing, China has trodden down a different path from that of Europe. This quirk of fate has led to an inescapable acceptance of the Confucian dogma. The teaching of Confucius cannot be falsified. The historical inevitability why Isaac Newton was not a Chinese seems to have been rooted in an idiosyncrasy of a linguistic development.

SNIP

Many young people today are idealists like I was, but they do not choose a Publishcareer in .science. They are not interested in superficial edifices of beauty; they are searching for a truth which cannot be found in a language that has no relevance to men and history, that defines time as the illusion of human mind, and that has expurgated beauty and hope from its vocabulary. I wonder if the young rebels of our generation have provided an answer to the question Why Isaac Newton was not a Chinese: the scientific revolution did not occur in China, because the truly talented became poets, painters, and creative writers; they chose not to be stifled by the Confucian academic tradition.

Complete paper at Search and Discovery

Or maybe if the Chinese had invented the telescope....we'd have a different answer. 

Why there was no Chinese Newton?

Kepler's laws, which helped pave the way for Newton's Principia, were developed in the early 1600s based on Brahe's naked-eye observations. Just a few decades earlier, Copernicus had placed the Sun at the center of the Solar System instead of the Earth. Ptolemaic astronomy had thus been superseded in Europe even before the introduction of the telescope. It is interesting to contrast this with Muslims, who had the same Ptolemaic and Greek starting point during the Middle Ages, yet nevertheless did not produce a similar breakthrough.

Could something like the Principia have been produced in China? Here is Science and Technology in World History by James E. McClellan and Harold Dorn, page 132-133:

"Although weak in astronomical theory, given the charge to search for heavenly omens, Chinese astronomers became acute observers….who produced systematic star charts and catalogues. Chinese astronomers recorded 1,600 observations of solar and lunar eclipses from 720 BCE, and developed a limited ability to predict eclipses. They registered seventy-five novas and supernovas (or 'guest' stars) between 352 BCE and 1604 CE, including the exploding star of 1054 (now the Crab Nebula), visible even in the daytime but apparently not noticed by Islamic or European astronomers. With comets a portent of disaster, Chinese astronomers carefully logged twenty-two centuries of cometary observations from 613 BCE to 1621 CE, including the viewing of Halley's comet every 76 years from 240 BCE. Observations of sunspots (observed through dust storms) date from 28 BCE. Chinese astronomers knew the 26,000-year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. Like the astronomers of the other Eastern civilizations, but unlike the Greeks, they did not develop explanatory models for planetary motion. They mastered planetary periods without speculating about orbits. Government officials also systematically collected weather data."

Complete Article at Global Politician

Shanghaied in Tokyo

One man's airport vigil against an authoritarian state.

Attention to China's human-rights violations often focuses on events inside the country, but the abuses don't stop at the border. Take the case of Feng Zhenghu, a Shanghai native who has been camping inside the arrival concourse at Narita airport for 42 days.

Mr. Feng is living in the airport not because he is homeless, but because he has been deported from China. The precise reasons remain unclear, but during the past decade Mr. Feng has often fallen afoul of local officials in Shanghai. The 55-year-old has written extensively about forced evictions in that city, helped petitioners pursue legal channels to address their grievances, and until recently published a "Monitoring Bulletin" about cases of judicial injustice. Earlier this year Mr. Feng was detained for more than a month, and after his release he went to Japan for research—and, he told us, because he wanted to avoid being in China during the sensitive Tiananmen Square anniversary on June 4, when surveillance of activists increases. He has since tried eight times to return to his native Shanghai, where he holds a residency permit (as well as a valid Chinese passport). He has been turned away four times by airlines—who wouldn't let him board—and four times by officials in Shanghai, who have hustled him on to return flights. Authorities have never given him a reason.

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The Wall Street Journal

Swastika

Your reaction when you see a swastika is?

The hooked cross symbol that is indelibly imprinted upon your mind evokes emotions of fear, hate, destruction, death - Armageddon? 

Swastika. 

Images.  Mental photos of warmth, love, goodwill wishes for mankind , dreams, prosperity, wealth,  symbols of love.

Swastika.

The mind's eye conjures images of  German jackbooted soldiers marching across Europe .  Unopposed.  Destruction, death - a world gone mad.

Racial impurity. Expunge. Genocide. Millions killed.

Swastika.

Hitler hijacked the Swastika and forever condemned it to be a symbol for evil?

Should the EU have banned the public display of this perceived symbol of evil when they had the opportunity?

The Swastika has been through out history, in many parts of the world, a religious symbol - especially in Asia.

SWASTIKA!

Photo: China Red Swastika Society member

The Red Swastika Society (simplified Chinese: 世界红卍字会; traditional Chinese: 世界紅卍字會; pinyin: shìjiè hóngwànzìhuì) is a voluntary association founded in China in 1922 by Qian Neng-kun (錢能訓), Du Bing-yin (杜秉寅) and Li Jia-bo (李佳白) as the philanthropic branch of the Daodeshe (道德社) "Society of Dao and Virtue", a syncretist Daoist school, which changed at the same time its name to Daoyuan. It was one of a number of new transnational world redemptive societies founded at the time in China, drawing on Western examples such as the Red Cross to build charitable institutions grounded in religions such as Buddhism and Daoism. (The swastika is a Buddhist/Hindu religious symbol.) Its strength during the 1920s and 1930s seem to vary widely, with citations of 30,000 "members" in 1927 to 7-10 million "followers" in 1937.    Wiki

The Oldest Known Symbol

The swastika is an ancient symbol that has been used for over 3,000 years. (That even predates the ancient Egyptian symbol, the Ankh!) Artifacts such as pottery and coins from ancient Troy show that the swastika was a commonly used symbol as far back as 1000 BCE. 

During the following thousand years, the image of the swastika was used by many cultures around the world, including in China, Japan, India, and southern Europe. By the Middle Ages, the swastika was a well known, if not commonly used, symbol but was called by many different names:  20th Century  History

The Swastika in Asian Art

Although the Swastika is often synonymous with the Nazi movement of the 20th century (actually a reverse swastika), it was widely used in ancient times as a symbol of prosperity and good fortune. It originally represented the revolving sun, fire, or life. One of the oldest known Swastikas was painted on a paleolithic cave at least 10,000 years ago.

Buddhist origins

The swastika was almost certainly introduced to China from India with Buddhism around 2,500 years ago as one of the 32 marks of a Buddha, and appears on an illustration of comets discovered in a tomb in Mawangdui, near Changsa, that has been dated as 2,300 years old.  Empress Wu- The swastika officially entered the Chinese language as a character in 693 AD. The only female emperor in feudal China, Wu Zetian,had become highly impressed with a group of mystic individuals, including an old nun who claimed to be a Buddha capable of predicting the future, and decreed that the swastika – which had come to mean ‘all’ or ‘eternality’ – should henceforth be regarded as a Chinese character, to be pronounced the same as 万 wàn ‘ten thousand’. The ‘psychic’ nun fell from grace just two years later – being arrested and enslaved after failing to predict a fire in the imperial palace. Wu was less taken (in) by all things mystic after the incident, but the swastika character stayed.  URBANATOMY

ORIGINS OF THE SWASTIKA

The Nazi party formally adopted the swastika - what they called the Hakenkreuz, the hooked cross - in 1920. This was used on the party's flag (above), badge, and armband.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote: "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika." Origins of the Swatiska

Reclaim The Swastika

The swastika has held a place of great importance in India and Asia for thousands of years, and is widely used by Hindus, Jains and Buddhists.

The swastika is to be seen everywhere across the Indian sub-continent: sculptured into temples both ancient and modern, decorating buildings, houses, shops, painted onto public buses, in taxis - even decorating the dashboards of the three-wheeler motor rickshaws. Many religious and spiritual books display the symbol. It may well be the most prevalent symbol one will see in India.Reclaim The Swastika

Falun Gong Wages War of Words with China

Falun Gong

I've heard about them.

I've never seen one.

I wouldn't know one if I did see one.

But, they always seem to be in trouble with the Chinese Communist Party.

This is all I know about the Falun Gong.

Falun Gong or Falun Dafa.  Who are they?  What do they stand for?  Why is the government of China opposed to them?  Sometimes, violently opposed.   What do they believe that the government fears them to the point of using torture against them, some say.

Let's try to find out.

Dictionary.com

Definition:  a spiritual, philosophical, and exercise system developed out of Taoism and Buddhism, with similarities to qi gong and t'ai chi ch'uan; also called Falun Dafa

On the surface, at least, they don't seem to be a threat to anyone.  Let's dig a little deeper.

VOA News.com English

Falun Gong Wages War of Words with China

Mike O'Sullivan | Los Angeles 30 November 2009

The organization Falun Gong made news in 1999, when its members held a massive demonstration outside Communist Party headquarters in Beijing.  In response, Chinese authorities labeled the group an evil cult.  And during the past 10 years, they have arrested thousands of Falun Gong adherents.  Human rights organizations say many followers have been tortured and some have died while in custody.  Falun Gong practitioners in the United States say they are working to get out their message in the face of a propaganda campaign by China.

Falun Gong supporters turn out to protest at major events involving China. 

In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, they drew attention to their cause, together with supporters of an independent Tibet, and free speech and human rights in China.

The group, known as Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, conducts a war of words with the Chinese government through multiple Internet Web sites.  Adherents say it is in response to the persecution of practitioners in China and attacks on the group by the Chinese media.

Falun Gong has also created its own media outlets, including the Epoch Times newspaper and New Tang Dynasty television.  Both are available in the United States and several other countries.

"In Geneva today, Chinese officials are facing questions from the United Nation's Committee Against Torture...," said the New Tang Dynasty television.

Falun Gong was founded in 1992 - one of many groups that promoted the popular practice of qigong [chee-gohng], a system of self-reflection through slow, meditative exercises.

Some Communist Party officials practiced qigong, and at least a few were sympathetic to Falun Gong.  The organization claimed 100 million practitioners in China.

But negative stories spread of Falun Gong practitioners forgoing medical treatment, instead relying on spiritual exercises, with some succumbing to their ailments as a result.  Chinese officials worried about the group's increasing size, aware that religiously inspired revolutionary movements have helped to topple imperial dynasties in the past.

Political scientist Maria Hsia Chang, author of the book Falun Gong: The End of Days, says Chinese officials try to control civil society and worry about the group, even though it is not overtly political."OK, today you are not political, but since you have got all these millions of followers and you have an organizational network, what is to prevent the leader from suddenly becoming political the next day?," Maria Hsia Chang.

Then, to this point, if I'm following this argument correctly, Beijing is fearful that, though they are not now a political threat, it is possible that at some point - they might become a political organization and pose a real threat to the government.  Right?

Religious Tolerance.org

History of Falun Dafa

The Falun Dafa movement is one tradition within Xulian -- ancient Chinese methods to cultivate mind and body as a means of keeping fit and healing oneself. They appear to have pre-historic roots that may date back many millennia.  However, the term Xulian had long been associated with practices that had religious sounding names. In order to make the practices more acceptable to the government, the leaders of Falun Dafa adopted a new word: Qigong (pronounced chee-gong). Qi means universal life energy; Gong means cultivation energy.

A self-improvement exercise that has its beginning within Xulian that can be traced to practices that has religious sounding names.

This doesn't sound too incriminating to me.  Anyone detect a revolutionary movement in the making. 

MEGA Essays.com

A Brief History of Falun Gong

Falun Gong is a form of qigong, an age-old Chinese tradition of meditation and exercise. (Beliefnet 1) Falun Gong is essentially a practice of five sets of movements, including both physical exercise and meditation, believed to heighten the physical, spiritual and moral health of its practitioners. (Beliefnet 1) The exercises of Falun Gong are an effort to rotate the falun, or the spinning body of energy thought to be located in the lower abdomen.

(Madsen 244) The problem the Chinese government has with Falun Gong is not so much that it is, or more precisely can be seen, as a religion but the degree to which the members are organized (even though there is no "official organization"). " (Dowell 2) However, the members of Falun Gong wished to express their grievances to the government of China. Accusations of coercing members into suicide and foregoing medical treatment, along with its vast membership and tight organization quickly sealed the fate of the label of evil cult. (Beliefnet 1) In its designer's own words: "The Law Wheel of the Buddha School, the Yin-Yang of the Tao School, and the ten-directional world are all reflected in the Falun -the Law-Wheel. It is also believed that this practice absorbs energy from the universe and will release negative elements from the body, which can remedy irregular conditions within the body such as pain, disease and the like. I am teaching a higher level of qigong. (CNN) Within its short, merely ten-year history, Falun Gong has accumulated more supporters than the Communist Party in China, and some estimates put this number at nearly ten percent of the population

Before concluding, I must say that the articles posted here are pro Falun Gong.  ONE is the official Falun Gong website (EPOCH TIMES).  ADD to this the fact that I did no research on the official government position nor did I list a single article penned by a Chinese government official or government sponsored media.  In fairness, the jury is still out.  Due diligence, friend.  Do your homework before making a decision as to whom is right or wrong.

Is the CCP paranoid?  Do they fear something that does not exist?   What one garners from reading the above websites; I think that it would be fair to assume that this is a true statement.  The government in Beijing fears any movement that has a membership larger than the Communist Party.  Political or apolitical.  

The Falun Gong, however, are paying a very high price for the right to exercise a believe that may or may not be a religion, does not appear to be anti-government, and gather to share ideas and keep ones body fit.

This is a fact of life in China under the current regime.

The boogie man is gonna get ya...

Who is Alex Jones?  Is Alex Jones a prophet, an isolationist, aggressive constitutionalist, doomsday prognosticator, charlatan, the devil, insane (elite conspiracist), anti-globalists, or just an ultraconservative?

Maybe he's just some guy that hit upon an idea to sell bullshit in a package that the ignorant and ill informed find consumable?

I don't really know.

This piece started out about the Internet - an interesting piece, I thought, on the Natural News.com site.  Here's a sample:

The Internet As You Know It Is Slated For Death by 2012

According to information readily accessible on the internet, the effort is underway to charge per site fees on most internet sites. The plan will convert the internet into a cable-like system in which customers will sign up and pay for access to specific web sites and then pay al a carte to visit any sites beyond the package they have bought. It's modeled on the manner in which cable TV subscribers buy prepackaged service, leaving them open to purchase extra services on a per view basis. Many sites not popular enough to be bundled would disappear. Costs for the average internet user would soar.

FCC regulations have already allowed the phone and cable giants to gain greater control over broadband and eliminate longstanding regularoty safeguards. Companies providing internet access are not required to operate in a nondiscriminatory manner. It has been governmental regulation of phone lines that has helped make the internet the open, accessible and vibrant medium it is today. But now the effort is underway to privatize these networks and the government is slowly allowing this to happen.

Okay, to this point it all seemed plausible to me.  I read a little farther down the page until I came to the name of Alex Jones.  Here, it was time to do a little searching (I'd never heard of the guy).  After I had checked several sites and looked into his bio - I kinda lost interest to tell you the truth. 

Further, I decided that if the Natural News website believed and promoted this kind of nonsensical, irrational piffle and tomfoolery, well, I can do without them, also.

Anyway, take a look if you're of a mind.

The Ultimate Man is dead. By his own hand.

The rise of China, the continued downward spiral of the fortunes of America, a lethargic Europe, technology killing more people than it saves, governments financially supporting those who will not help themselves, third world countries ever increasingly chasing, and, in some instances, achieving a Western way of life for their citizens....

We've come finally, and thankfully, close to the end of our journey.

When societies evolve to the point they no longer need to search and gather, what's left but to destroy ourselves with meaningless pastimes.

''The Ultimate Man" is dead.  He has killed himself.  A clear and irrefutable case of suicide.

Life On Venus: Europe’s Last Man - Adam Kirsch

This vision never came very close to becoming a reality; the late nineteenth century was, after all, the era of communism and anarchism, imperialism and scientific racism. It is remarkable, then, to consider how many of the greatest writers of the period were exercised by the possibility that reason, progress, and material well-being—in short, the bourgeois order—might destroy the human spirit. The definitive statement of this view was offered by Nietzsche in the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where he summons the specter of the Last Man—or, as R. J. Hollingdale renders it in his translation, the Ultimate Man:

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Ultimate Man, who makes everything small. His race is as inexterminable as the flea; the Ultimate Man lives longest.
“We have discovered happiness,” say the Ultimate Men and blink. . . .
They still work, for work is entertainment. But they take care the entertainment does not exhaust them.

Nobody grows rich or poor any more: both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both are too much of a burden.

Study Guide for Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book One

Francis Fukuyama -  The End of History and the Last Man

It is only thymotic man, the man of anger who is jealous of his own dignity and the dignity of his fellow citizens, the man who feels that his worth is constituted by something more than the complex set of desires that make up his physical existence—it is this man alone who is willing to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers. And it is frequently the case that without such small acts of bravery in response to small acts of injustice, the larger train of events leading to fundamental changes in political and economic structures would never occur.

W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles, and Ian McEwan’s Saturday.