Binary Sequences

[tealight]

I'm a little confused about the I Ching binary sequencing.

I had been assuming that changes went from the first line:
2,24,7,19 ...
But then I've been reading some places where it changes top down:
2,23,8,20 ...

It seems these are two alternative sequences.
I'd like to get the right name to refer to each. Also curious why some people prefer one version over the other, if anyone has a view on this.

 

[bradford]

If you look at any version of the Early Heaven sequence in the 8x8 grid you'll see that it goes 2, 23, 8, 20 ... the way we read, left to right & top to bottom. If you rotate that 90 degrees clockwise you will read the same sequence the way Chinese was always written, top to bottom and right to left. A few people in the West have written it the other way but it doesn't fit any of the old graphics, particularly those of Shao Yong, who came up with the sequence in the first place. Also, if you write numbers the way we write decimals you do the largest digit first. When you build a Hexagram you write from the bottom up.

 

[russell]

I am one of those few in the West who wants to turn hexagrams into binary numbers from bottom to top. I have nothing against Shao Yong’s ordering system, I just don’t think is the right way to form a number system. And I would personally order them the other way as well.

I have presented my case here, fwiw:

russellcottrell.com/VirtualYarrowStalks/little-endian.htm

—Russell

 

[bradford]

Furthermore, it was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, having already invented (or discovered) the binary number system prior to being exposed to the work of Shao Yong, who recognized the binary sequence in Shao's diagrams. I don't think he ever said anything about them being all messed up and topsy turvy.

And I suppose that if there are further doubts you could look at figures 2 thru 30 of my Volume Two, and note that the Shao Yong sequence exhibits mathematical symmetries for every major structural dimension of the Yi.

 

[russell]

The best thing about figure 5 is that if you scroll it rapidly up and down, an optical illusion makes the lines look like moving spider legs.