Work #1869
I Ching (Book of Changes, attributed arrangement)
The foundational Chinese classic — sixty-four hexagrams mapping the complete cycle of cosmic change through the interplay of yin and yang
King Wen of Zhou (traditional attribution)
· c. 1050–800 BCE (core hexagram and judgment layers; commentaries later)
· Classical Chinese
· Divination manual and cosmological treatise (64 hexagrams with judgments and line statements)
Tradition: Chinese classical canon (one of the Five Classics)
"One yin and one yang — this is the Tao" — the oldest Chinese classic, encoding cosmic process in sixty-four binary figures
The I Ching (Yijing, Book of Changes) is the oldest and most foundational of the Chinese classics. Tradition attributes the arrangement of the sixty-four hexagrams and their judgments (guaci) to King Wen of Zhou, who reportedly composed them while imprisoned by the last Shang king. The line statements (yaoci) are attributed to his son, the Duke of Zhou, and the philosophical commentaries (the Ten Wings / Shiyi) are attributed to Confucius. Modern scholarship dates the core text to the late Western Zhou or early Spring and Autumn period, with the commentaries added during the Warring States period. The hexagram system — six lines of broken (yin) or unbroken (yang) lines, yielding 64 combinations — is simultaneously a divinatory tool (casting yarrow stalks or coins to obtain a hexagram) and a cosmological map of the complete cycle of change. The Great Commentary (Xici zhuan) interprets the hexagrams as expressing the Tao — the dynamic process underlying all reality — and establishes the I Ching as the foundation of Chinese metaphysics, ethics, and natural philosophy.
Author
Editions cited
- Richard Wilhelm (trans.), The I Ching or Book of Changes (Bollingen, 1950; with foreword by C. G. Jung)
- Edward L. Shaughnessy, I Ching: The Classic of Changes (Ballantine, 1996)
- Richard Rutt, The Book of Changes (Zhouyi) (RoutledgeCurzon, 2002)
School Embodiments
Confucianism
25%
Foundational classic of the Confucian canon; Confucius devoted his late years to its study.
"If years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Changes." (Analects VII.17)
Taoism
25%
The yin-yang cosmology of the I Ching is the foundation of Taoist metaphysics.
"One yin and one yang — this is the Tao." (Great Commentary / Xici zhuan)
The earliest systematic process ontology: reality is change, not substance.
"Change is ceaseless." (Great Commentary / Xici zhuan)
Universal cosmology; binary structure linked by Leibniz to binary arithmetic.
"The Changes is a book vast and great, in which everything is complete." (Great Commentary)
Cosmopolitanism
10%
The cosmic order applies to all under heaven (tianxia), not only one kingdom.
"The sage takes all under heaven as his concern." (Great Commentary)
Jung wrote the foreword to the Wilhelm translation, interpreting the I Ching through synchronicity.
"The I Ching does not offer proof and results; it ... mirrors the moment." (C. G. Jung, foreword to Wilhelm trans.)
Zhou Ritual tradition.
Internal Tensions
Determinism versus freedom: if hexagrams reveal the pattern of change, is the sage conforming to fate or choosing? Divinatory manual versus cosmological treatise: practical guidance versus universal philosophy.
⧖
I. Time
Infinite cyclical process of change; relational (defined by changing states); both determined and free.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Both
Traversability: Cyclical
Direction: Uni-directional
Dimensionality: One
✦
II. Space
Relational — heaven and earth as dynamic poles; infinite extent (tianxia); local application in divination.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Curvature: not engaged
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◉
III. Matter
Relational and conserved: yin-yang transforms but nothing is lost; matter as process, not substance.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Relational
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◎
IV. Observer
The sage reads hexagrams to discern change; mediate knowledge; providential — Heaven bestows the Mandate.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Knowledge Extent: Mediate
Knowledge Retainment: Partial
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Active
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: Providential
⚡
V. Energy
Qi as vital energy: infinite, relational, conserved, reversible (yin and yang alternate).
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Reversible
⧉
VI. Information
64 hexagrams as a discrete binary information system encoding the complete pattern of the Tao.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Non-conserved
Granularity: Discrete
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How I Ching (Book of Changes, attributed arrangement) resolves each dilemma
32 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 22 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 25 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree
(38/208)
How much weight do future people deserve?
If a billion people will exist in the 25th century, do their interests count for as much as the interests of a billion people alive now? The answer turns on what kind of reality the future has.
Past, present, and future are bound in cycles — duties span generations as a matter of course.
On these views, time is not a one-way arrow but a structure of return: cosmic cycles, karmic cycles, the seasons, the succession of generations. To act now is always also to act for the ancestors who shaped your inheritance and for the descendants who will …
Roads not taken
Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much. (47%) ·
Time arises from events or from a deeper substrate — the future is not yet. (31%) ·
The future branches — what we owe depends on which branch we create. (2%)
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree
(38/208)
Is regret rational?
If the past is fixed and unchangeable, what kind of mental act is regret? An error, a duty, a lesson, a perspective on a moment that is still in some sense present?
The past is part of a cycle one keeps returning to; regret is one of the gates of the cycle.
On cyclical views, the past is not a fixed thing behind you — it is part of the ongoing structure of return: karmic cycles, cosmic cycles, the cycle of seasons and generations. Regret, on these views, is less about an unchangeable past and more about …
Roads not taken
The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing. (47%) ·
The past is not a thing now; regret is the present holding what is no longer. (31%) ·
Other branches exist; regret tracks roads not taken that are nonetheless real. (2%)
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree
(38/208)
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
A species that no longer exists cannot be helped, cannot be consulted, cannot benefit. Whether anything is owed to it anyway turns on what kind of reality past beings have.
Past beings are part of the cycle; we owe them what we owe ancestors.
On cyclical views, the relationship to past beings — ancestors, lineages, predecessors — is structurally present, because past and future are part of the same ongoing structure of return. Extinct species are not categorically different from extinct human ancestors or non-yet-born descendants: all are part …
Roads not taken
Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing. (47%) ·
Past species no longer exist; what we owe is to the present and the future. (31%) ·
Extinction is path-dependent; the species exists in branches we didn't take. (2%)
3 mainstream positions
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing.
47%
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time.
47%
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide.
47%
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
What is money?
The question of what money is — a measured store of real value, an agreed-on practice, a relational ledger of debts, or just a name we apply to many different things — sits behind every argument about inflation, cryptocurrency, debt, and the state.
Money is the ledger of obligations among real people.
On relational views, money is not a substance you have; it is a record of who owes whom what. Debts and credits are real because the relations they track are real — to kin, to community, to ancestors, to land. Money is the form this …
Roads not taken
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. (55%) ·
Money is a social practice — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
“Money” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal. (8%)
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
What is a nation?
Whether a nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character, a constructed legal-political artifact, a web of kinship and shared history, an imagined community, or a conventional partition of a deeper unity — these are real ontological positions with sharply different political downstream.
A nation is the web of kinship, ancestry, and shared land that hosts a people.
On relational views, the nation is the relational fabric — extended kinship, ancestral inheritance, shared ecology, communal practice — that hosts a people across generations. Borders matter less than belonging; lineage and land carry the weight that political structures only ratify.
Roads not taken
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. (55%) ·
A nation is a constructed polity — a project, not a discovery. (16%) ·
“Nation” names a family of practices imaginatively held together. (8%)
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
What makes someone male or female?
Whether sex is a real biological kind, a constructed social category, a relational identity, a label applied to varied phenomena, or a conventional distinction within a deeper unity is the ontological question the contemporary dispute about gender is mostly about.
Sex and gender are constituted by relations of recognition.
On relational views, identity is not a property a person has alone; it is constituted by the web of recognition the person sits in. What makes someone a man or a woman in any thick sense is the relations of kinship, community, ritual, and recognition …
Roads not taken
Sex is a real biological kind with given content. (55%) ·
Gender is constructed; what counts as male or female reflects practice. (16%) ·
“Male” and “female” are family-resemblance terms — no single essence. (8%)
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
Should we edit the human germline?
Whether human nature is a given biological kind, a constructed category, a relational achievement, a family-resemblance cluster, or a conventional distinction within deeper unity is the ontological question the policy debate over heritable gene editing is mostly about.
Personhood is constituted by relations of descent and kinship; germline editing reshapes the relational fabric.
On relational views, what makes someone a person is the web of kinship, ancestry, and community they sit in — not a property the body carries alone. Heritable editing intervenes in exactly this fabric: the lineage that ancestors handed on, the descent that descendants will …
Roads not taken
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. (55%) ·
The categories we count as 'human' are emergent from practice; germline editing is a practice-revision like any other. (16%) ·
'Human nature' is a cluster term without a single essence; the editing question is empirical, not metaphysical. (8%)
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(33/208)
Is the world created from nothing?
Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most distinctive Western-theological claims. Whether matter was created from nothing, eternally exists, or is sustained moment-by-moment turns on what kind of thing matter is.
Matter is constituted by relations; the question of 'from what?' presupposes substance.
On this view, matter is not a stuff but a patterning — the standing relations among things, ancestors, processes, and places. The creatio-ex-nihilo question doesn't quite arise, because the ontology has no slot for a free-standing substance to be created or eternal. What persists is …
Roads not taken
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. (56%) ·
Matter is real but emerges from something deeper — neither bedrock nor created-from-nothing. (23%) ·
Matter arises and dissolves through cosmic rounds; neither created from nothing nor eternal. (4%)
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
When does a person begin?
The political question of abortion sits atop an older ontological one: at what point does there exist a someone — a being with moral standing — rather than merely the materials from which one will form?
Personhood is conferred by being-in-relation.
On relational views, person was never the name of a thing that exists on its own — it is the name of a node in a web of recognition, obligation, kinship, and ecology. The question of when a being becomes a person is the question …
Roads not taken
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. (55%) ·
A person comes into being gradually, as the capacities of a mind develop. (16%) ·
The question presupposes a fact of the matter that isn’t there. (8%)
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
What is marriage?
Behind every disagreement about how marriage should be defined is a prior disagreement about what kind of thing it is — a given order to be recognized, a practice to be negotiated, or a web of relations to be woven.
Marriage is constituted by the web of relations it creates.
On relational views, marriage is not a thing in itself but a node in a web — a configuration of obligations to children, extended kin, ancestors, ecology, and community. Its definition is what the network of relations is, and any attempt to specify it apart …
Roads not taken
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. (55%) ·
Marriage is a practice we shape — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
“Marriage” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal. (8%)
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world.
On these views, humans were never outside nature, and the question of our 'place in' it is the question of how to live within the relations that already constitute us. Plants, animals, rivers, ancestors, descendants are not resources or stage scenery; they are kin and …
Roads not taken
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (50%) ·
Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) ·
Subject to a real natural order we did not make. (12%)
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
Should we colonize space?
The drive to extend human presence beyond Earth is sometimes framed as the next chapter of stewardship, sometimes as hubris, sometimes as escape from problems we ought to solve here. Which it is depends on what we take our relationship to nature to be.
Colonisation continues the work that ended the wisdom of seven-generation thinking.
On relational views, space colonisation is the abstract endpoint of the same pattern that produced ecological crisis on Earth: humans treating themselves as separate from the more-than-human world they are actually inside. To go to Mars in the spirit of leaving Earth is to leave …
Roads not taken
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. (50%) ·
The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. (15%) ·
Nature includes its limits; colonisation is bounded by what the cosmos allows. (12%)
Distinctive · only 14% of schools agree
(30/208)
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Editing the genomes of the plants and animals we eat is either the natural continuation of breeding — careful improvement of what is given — or a category error that treats biology as raw material rather than as living kind.
Editing the genome cuts into the relational fabric; we should be very slow.
On relational views, organisms are not isolated substrates whose genomes can be edited without consequence; they are nodes in webs of mutual constitution with soils, ecologies, ancestors, and human cultivars. Genetic editing changes the node in ways the web has not had time to integrate. …
Roads not taken
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. (50%) ·
What counts as a 'natural' genome is itself a construction. (15%) ·
Biology is what it is; we modify it within real biological constraints. (12%)
10 mainstream positions
What happens to "you" when you die?
You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates.
18%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Loss is part of cycles; what disappears returns in another form.
18%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Civilization rises and falls in cycles; recovery is structural to history.
18%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Local entropy increase is part of a cycle; the moral category is participation in the cycle.
18%
Could causation work backwards?
Time is structured as return; 'forward' and 'backward' are local features of the cycle.
18%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
Memory and anticipation are phases of a cycle that visits both directions.
18%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
Within a cycle there is a direction; across the cycle there isn't.
18%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
An AI’s standing is constituted by the relations it enters.
14%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
An animal's standing is constituted by its place in the relational fabric.
11%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
The organoid's standing is constituted by the relations of care around its production.
11%
22 unaligned
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Schools split: 47% / 38% / 8%
—
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Schools split: 43% / 37% / 12%
—
Are there indivisible units of experience?
Schools split: 44% / 36% / 13%
—
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Schools split: 47% / 38% / 8%
—
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
Schools split: 31% / 30% / 17%
—
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Schools split: 50% / 29% / 12%
—
Does history have a direction or meaning?
Schools split: 36% / 23% / 19%
—
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Schools split: 46% / 34% / 12%
—
Does prayer change God's mind?
Schools split: 46% / 34% / 12%
—
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Schools split: 24% / 17% / 13%
—
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
Schools split: 36% / 30% / 14%
—
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
Schools split: 46% / 34% / 12%
—
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Schools split: 44% / 36% / 13%
—
Is reality fundamentally digital?
Schools split: 44% / 36% / 13%
—
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Schools split: 31% / 30% / 17%
—
Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal?
Schools split: 14% / 14% / 4%
—
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Schools split: 36% / 30% / 14%
—
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Schools split: 66% / 16% / 10%
—
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Schools split: 31% / 30% / 17%
—
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
Schools split: 42% / 16% / 13%
—
What makes someone the same person over time?
Schools split: 36% / 30% / 14%
—
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
Schools split: 38% / 28% / 16%
—
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone.
50%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys.
50%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible.
50%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away.
50%