Mou Zongsan's fortune telling

What is the practical significance of philosophy such as the Book of Changes? I am a philosophy lover, but I don't understand. It just confuses me at present.

If you don't want to read the following summary, it's just a sentence.

The Book of Changes is China's ancient monograph on the origin of the world. From ancient times to the present, it has greatly influenced the literati of all ages, but because modern ideas and concepts are monism and materialism, dualism and the ideological trend of studying western philosophy in modern times and all kinds of messy things have been resolutely curbed. Therefore, the Book of Changes is gradually developing from an all-encompassing book to a book only involving divination.

The Book of Changes, as the name of an ancient book in China, has been popular since the Han Dynasty. The ruling clique of the Han Dynasty ruled the world with Confucianism. Confucian scholars chose a set of ancient books (Thirteen Classics) as a tool for knowledge dissemination, and listed the Book of Changes as the first classic, which was called the Book of Changes. The editors of Zhouyi called the previous generation of Yijing "Yijing". According to the Book of Rites, before the Book of Changes, there were three versions of the Book of Changes, namely, Guizang, Lianshan and Zhouyi, and the later Book of Changes refers to the Book of Changes. The formation of Zhouyi has gone through a long process. There is a saying in academic circles that "the Book of Changes has three sages", that is, Fuxi wrote eight diagrams, Wang Wen's copula performed as sixty-four hexagrams, and Confucius wrote biographies. The Book of Changes, which has been handed down to this day, was written in the Warring States Period and compiled by Confucius and his descendants. In fact, the Book of Changes has been tested by two important historical figures, Lao Zi and Qin Shihuang. There are 88 quotations from the Book of Changes in Laozi's Tao Te Ching (according to the Book of Changes, edited by Zuxing, Warwick International Publishing House, 1 edition, March 2009, page 2), while Ying Zheng, the first Qin Emperor, kept the Book of Changes in the political and cultural movement of "burning books and burying Confucianism". For the convenience of narration, this paper uses the name "Book of Changes".

The nature and value of the Book of Changes have been debated endlessly in the field of modern philosophy in China. Until today, scholars still have different views on the Book of Changes. The thought of Yijing originated from Fuxi gossip. In the long historical process from Zhou Wenwang, Laozi, Confucius and Qin Shihuang to the late Qing Dynasty, its scientific nature has never been questioned by China scholars. At the beginning of the 20th century, at the historical moment when modern western science and technology advanced by leaps and bounds, China became a desert of science and technology, maintained a backward social and political system, and was plundered and trampled by imperialist powers. In this case, people of insight in China raised the banner of democracy, science and legal system and introduced Marxism-Leninism. This situation has also become the reason why modern scholars such as Yang Zhenning denied the Book of Changes, believing that it hindered the development of science and technology in China.

After the founding of New China, dialectical materialism and historical materialism occupied a dominant position in China's philosophy, and the academic circles' evaluation of the Book of Changes was mostly negative. take for example

1, Ci Hai (Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House, 1 August, 980/edition, print edition,1page 390):

The Book of Changes is the Book of Changes. (2) refers to the part of the Book of Changes that is relative to biography. It consists of two symbols and two words, which are used for divination. It may have sprouted in the Yin and Zhou Dynasties at the earliest, but all the classics should be the products of long-term accumulation, totaling 64 hexagrams and 384 hexagrams. Under the cloak of religious superstition, some simple dialectical views of the ancients were retained.

2. On Classics (Yang Bojun, Zhonghua Book Company Press, 1 July 9841Edition);

The ancients lacked understanding of the objective conditions and laws of natural and social phenomena, which led to many superstitious activities. Bu Hejia () is superstitious. Especially in the upper class, you have to ask the immortals for good or ill luck before you can move (7 pages).

Confucius regarded Zhouyi as a philosophy book, not a divination book (15 page).

The interpretation of Zhouyi in Han Dynasty can not be separated from "image" and "number" ... At the end of the Three Kingdoms Wei Dynasty, Wang Bi annotated Zhouyi, which started the metaphysics and swept away the number technique (that is, the above-mentioned "image number", "mutual body" and "mystery"), so he put Zhouyi. Chen Tuan, a Taoist priest in the Song Dynasty, founded the theories of "nature", "nurture", "Tai Chi", "river map" and "Luo Shu" and turned Zhouyi into an alchemist's book (16- 17).

Zhouyi is a divination book, and we should return it to its true colors, but we can still regard it as an ancient divination book. This is the superstition of the ancients ... (page 17)

3. China Cultural Dictionary (edited by Shi Xuanyuan, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1987 1 1 version);

Yijing: refers to the biography-related part of Yijing. This is the oldest divination book handed down so far. ..... It preserved the information about ancient people's thinking and cognitive ability in the form of religious superstition, among which there was the bud of naive dialectics, which had a far-reaching influence in the history of China's thought.

Among the above three works, the latter two basically copied the viewpoint of Ci Hai, and both believed that the Book of Changes was a book of divination and a feudal superstition. All three believe that divination activities must be feudal superstitious activities.

In China, some superstitious activities are closely related to the Book of Changes, such as fortune telling, Yin and Yang Feng Shui activities and so on. However, the "superstition" theory in the Book of Changes has not unified people's views. On the contrary, in China's ideological and cultural circles, the theory of "reason" in the Book of Changes has also continued. According to Zhang Shanwen's introduction in Ma Zhenbiao's posthumous book The Book of Changes (Ma Zhenbiao's posthumous book, edited by Zhang Shanwen, Huacheng Publishing House, 1, 2002), Professor Ma Zhenbiao, who once taught in the Department of Chinese Studies of China University in Beiping, "takes it as his duty to promote the Book of Changes" and "devotes his life to it". Ma Zhen Biao died in the late 1960s, and his study of the Book of Changes continued to this period. Zhang Shanwen himself and his teacher Professor Huang Shouqi also co-authored The Book of Changes, which was published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House as 1989. Zhao Theorem combines China's Book of Changes, moral philosophy, physics and mathematics, and becomes a representative figure of the "Neo-Confucianism" school in contemporary China. Zhao Theorem 1958 Graduated from the Department of Mathematical Astronomy of Nanjing University, majoring in astrophysics. In the same year, he was assigned to the Solar Physics Laboratory of Purple Mountain Observatory, China Academy of Sciences, to study solar spectrum. 1984 (introduced as 1964) switched to study ancient astronomy, Yijing and traditional Chinese medicine. He has compiled many books on Yi-ology, philosophy and popular science. His book "Mathematical Principles of China's Natural Philosophy" was published by Guangming Daily Press in April 2003, which attracted extensive attention from the academic circles. Mou Zongsan and Zuxing of Taiwan Province Province. There are also many easy-to-learn achievements. Mou Zongsan once thought: "Hegel can't understand Taoism, and he can't understand China's philosophy at all" (Lectures on Four Principles, Mou Zongsan, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1 June 19981Edition, 63 pages). 1997 12.27, the first international conference on the book of changes was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which kicked off the regular activities of the international book of changes.

What kind of book is the Book of Changes? The superstition of the Book of Changes is based on the fact that most of the conjunctions in the sixty-four hexagrams of the Book of Changes handed down as the king of literature are related to good or bad fortune in divination. For example: dry divination first, Yuan, Heng, Li, Zhen. Festival hexagrams sixty, six, bitter festival, chastity, regret death. The Book of Changes was mainly used for divination in ancient times, and a large number of Oracle Bone Inscriptions unearthed in modern times are examples. The spread of the Book of Changes among the people also coexists with superstitious activities such as divination and fortune telling. However, these judgments on the value of the Book of Changes are seriously flawed. First of all, divination activities are not equal to superstitious activities. Accounting is inference or prediction, and it is a problem-solving activity. Zan is a kind of grass, which is used as a calculation tool. Predicting the fortunes of an action is not only the work of ancient people, but also the work of modern people, but the process of divination and speculation should be based on the movement law of objective things. To achieve accurate divination, it is necessary to set up divination accurately; To set up divination accurately, we must fully understand the characteristics of the movement and change of things. Secondly, the fact that the Book of Changes is used in superstitious activities does not mean that the Book of Changes is a product of superstitious activities, just as physics is used in superstitious activities, it cannot prove that physics is a product of superstition.

Before the Book of Changes became a Confucian classic, it was generally called the Book of Changes, but no one called it Zhan, Bu and Jia. As for Gui Zang, Lianshan and Zhouyi, they are the versions of the Book of Changes in Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, which are said to be related to the arrangement order of hexagrams or elephants. There is no dispute whether the meaning of the word "one" is "change" or "change". The problem lies in how to treat the changes concerned by the Book of Changes. People who understand the Book of Changes in a narrow sense only regard the changes of the Book of Changes as all forms of changes formed by six yin and yang, without considering the symbols of six yin and yang. "Yi" is a hieroglyph. Some people think it is like a lizard, while others think it is like the sun and the moon. Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi": "Lizards drag (left worms right) to keep the palace, which is pictographic; The minister said that the sun and the moon are easy, such as yin and yang. " In fact, the behavior of lizards guarding the palace is also a changing process.

What we are discussing now is developed on the basis of Fu Bagua. The legendary ancestors of Han civilization include Fu, Suiren, Youchao, Shennong and Huangdi. According to the inference of contemporary historians, the Yellow Emperor among the Five Emperors lived in the early 26th century BC (according to Modern Chinese Dictionary), but this is only speculation. There are many records about Fu, the emperor of Tai Hao, in the works of pre-Qin and Han dynasties, so it is impossible to determine his life age. We can only judge the age of Fuxi's life according to various documents, probably in the late Neolithic period. According to the later literature, Fu looked up at the astronomical phenomena and down at geography, and found the way of mutual change between Yin and Yang in everything, and drew eight diagrams as the symbol of this mutual change law. In the Fu era, the writing of the Han nationality was still in the primary stage, so there was a lack of written explanations about rumors. As for Yin and Yang, Sancai, Gankunkan, Zhengen Xundui, Heaven, Earth, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Mountain and Ze, etc. They are either taught by predecessors or developed for future generations. At the end of Shang Dynasty, King Wen interpreted the Eight Diagrams into sixty-four hexagrams and defined and standardized them in written language.

In the Book of Changes, "image" is an important concept, and its meaning is equivalent to that of modern Chinese. "Symbolic interaction" is also an important concept in modern western philosophy. All symbols can be regarded as symbols, such as attractive language symbols. Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi: "Elephant, a big beast with a long nose and teeth in South Vietnam, looks like a quadruped elephant with ears and teeth." Although the elephant still lives in South Asia today, the ancients did not often see the elephant's entity, but only imagined it according to its bones. This is the source of the semantics expressed by the hieroglyph "Xiang". In the process of reading and understanding the Book of Changes, symbols with different meanings should be distinguished. The first is the symbol of eight diagrams (or sixty-four hexagrams). The gossip symbol symbolizes the universal form of the movement and change of all things, rather than individual things or specific signs of good or bad luck. Secondly, it is the symbolic meaning of the three positions. The so-called "three talents, heaven and earth people" is a common form to express the movement and change of things with the relationship between "heaven and earth people", and "heaven and earth people" is just an example. The reason why ancient scholars called Sancai "heaven and earth people" is because it is the largest, largest and largest people's congress in the world, and it is most easily recognized by people. Thirdly, explain the divinatory meaning defined by Wang Wen with various social life and natural phenomena involved in Wang Wen's copula of "taking things near, taking things far away".

The Book of Changes is a book that uses two symbols (signs) of Yin and Yang to express the universal form of the unity of opposites within things, and uses three (or three) directions to express the universal relationship of the movement and change of things. If renamed according to modern academic norms, the Book of Changes is called a universal form of movement and change of things.

All philosophies have a common purpose, that is, to find the universal laws governing the movement, change and development of our world, which is called Tao or logic. But the knowledge of Buddhism and quantum physics school tells us that the universe may be infinite. We believe that we are facing the same world, but different observers and thinkers always come to different conclusions. Materialism and idealism, metaphysics and dialectics, monism, dualism and pluralism, determinism and uncertainty, existentialism, structuralism, logical atomism and so on. , are the products of different observers observing and thinking about the world at different time and space points. Among all these doctrines and theories, who can stand the test of history is another matter.

Human beings are conscious animals and intelligent animals. In the process of seeking freedom in the world, human beings always pay attention to the pros and cons of their own behavior and the success or failure. Human beings acquire knowledge in the process of interaction with the environment and support their actions by accumulating knowledge. Human beings are knowledgeable about the relationship between themselves and the environment, and the relationship between individual things and the whole world. If we think that philosophy is the knowledge about the world outlook, then the opposite is science. Our understanding and research on individual things and phenomena are based on our worldview; In order to get a "universal and fundamental view" on nature, society and thinking, we must "look up at the sky and overlook geography" and abstract the fundamental reasons for the movement and change of everything.

The infinite richness of the universe provides us with infinite cognitive space, so human philosophy is rich and colorful. However, most of the philosophical thoughts that influenced the world in modern times rose from the west. China, like a philosophical vacuum, was constantly enlightened by western philosophical civilization. However, this cannot be the basis of China's philosophy of illegality. Although China's thought of Yi-ology originated in ancient times and was neglected and criticized in modern times, it is far more scientific, universal, concise and thorough than many major western schools.

The Book of Changes put forward the theory of the unity of opposites of Yin and Yang and founded dialectics. The dialectics of the Book of Changes is neither idealistic nor materialistic, which is higher than Hegel's idealistic dialectics. Some people think that the Book of Changes contains "simple dialectics", but there is no "luxury dialectics" outside the Book of Changes. Compared with the Book of Changes, Hegel's dialectics is only a retrogression. The Book of Changes reveals the most complicated truth with the simplest symbol combination and establishes the earliest formal language symbol system of mankind. The Book of Changes contains the idea of binary counting, which gives Leibniz inspiration or support. I ching adopted a structuralist approach. One of his divinatory symbols is a sentence, and the mysterious symbol is a vocabulary. I ching put forward the theory of the main aspects of contradiction. In the Confucian thought of Yi-ology, Gan is the dominant contradiction and Kun is the subordinate contradiction. The Book of Changes established the earliest problem-solving procedure of mankind, which is divination condemned by superstitious theorists of the Book of Changes. The purpose of divination is to establish a formal sentence or data structure; Divination is to determine the future motion state of things according to the laws of motion that have been mastered. The problem-solving methods in the Book of Changes can still be directly applied to machine calculation. Based on the Book of Changes, the Book of Changes, which has lasted for thousands of years in China, has a very clear conceptual system, which is not in an abstract and low-level state as Hegel pointed out. We will discuss the extremely rich ideas contained in the Book of Changes in another article.