Abstract

The Yijing is one of the oldest classics in China and is listed as the first classic in the Five Classics. It has more than three-thousand-year history and so far, there is no scholar know specifically who wrote this text. This research project has both historical and mathematical goals. Historically, it traces the evolution of the Yijing from the Zhou to the Han dynasty and From the Song to the Qing dynasty. Mathematically, it looks at how the Yijing can be associated with the binary system and the Boolean Algebra. The Yijing first was used as a manual for divination but it was transformed into a philosophical text, showing how one can follow the Way of Heaven and Earth, and a guide on the patterns of the universe. Ten Wings played a significant role in this process. After this transformation, the Yijing was also used to legitimize the rulership and was later introduced to the west after the seventeenth century. During this period, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz theorized and proved that there might be some connections between the Yijing and the binary systems. Into the twenty-first century, more mathematical researches have been down related to the Yijing and discovered that Boolean Lattice can be applied to represent some characteristics of trigrams.

Advisor

Kelvey, Robert

Second Advisor

Ng, Margaret Wee Siang Ng

Department

History; Mathematics

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities

Keywords

Yijing

Publication Date

2020

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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