Abstract
The Book of Changes (Yi Jing) written at the end of the Yin and the beginning of the Zhou dynasty is a classic system of symbols and concepts. Generations of annotations developed its philosophical theories and perfected the mathematical logic of its symbol system. In the eighteenth century, the German mathematician Leibniz discovered that the Graph of Changes (Yi Tu) is consistent with the table of binary numbers. In the twentieth century, Shen Zhongtao, Xue Xueqian, Ding Chaowu, and others used binomial expansion and algebraic matrices to explain the evolution of the eight trigrams and the 64 hexagrams. This article explains the composition, geometry and group theory of the Graph of Changes popularized by Shao Yong.
Journal of Dialectics of Nature VII(3) (1985) 12-19. The writer wishes to express his gratitude to Professor Du Shiran for reading the article and to Professor Gao Chongshou for discussions which contributed to the third section.
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Guangbi, D. (1996). The Book of Changes and Mathematics. In: Dainian, F., Cohen, R.S. (eds) Chinese Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 179. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8717-4_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8717-4_12
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