Let's Get Academic about the Yi

[lindsay]

Every once in awhile Luis – bless him! – posts an academic article on Clarity. As you probably know, such articles published in scholarly journals are the backbone of modern academic life. Nearly all college and university professors publish their research first in journals, and later (if they’re lucky) in books.

For many years a small army of academics have been publishing research concerning Chinese history, culture, and languages in scholarly journals. The problem for us non-academic folk has always been (1) finding out what’s available, and (2) getting access to it. Nowadays, thanks to the web, things have gotten easier. That’s what I want to talk about here. I hope a few people will be encouraged to push out into the realm of academic literature.

(1) Finding out what’s available

In the past, academic researchers relied on bibliographies to find out what had been published on a particular topic. If you like this approach, Prof. Paul R. Goldin has a set of very useful bibliographies on his personal website, http://www.paulrgoldin.com/ . I especially recommend the one called “Ancient Chinese Civilization: Bibliography of Materials in Western Languages.” Other good bibliographies are also available on the web, but that is not my subject here. Instead, I would like to tell you how to find academic material by means of a search.

The key is Google Scholar. Go into the Google homepage, click on “more” at the top center of the page, and select “Scholar”. This will give you a page that looks a lot like plain, old Google – except that (almost) everything that comes up will be part of an academic book or journal.

Use the same search techniques on Google Scholar you would use on Google itself. Be warned however that searching on “Yi Jing” will bring up about 50,000 scientific articles by a Chinese scientist named – you guessed it! – Yi Jing. Try instead a search on “Chinese Yijing Book of Changes I Ching” (without quotes) and you will do much better.

The search results show the title of the journal article, the author’s name, the name of the journal, the date of publication, and the location. The location is often an internet academic archive like JSTOR, Blackwell Synergy, SpringerLink or Questia.com. I think JSTOR is the biggest archive for Yijing-related material.

Each search usually yields 100 pages of results, unless your search criteria are specific enough to narrow down the field. After searching the titles, Scholar will then search the text content of the articles themselves to find reference to your key words. The search results will include books (clearly marked and often available through Google Books) as well as journal articles.

The best and most relevant English-language academic journals for Yijing-related and ancient Chinese materials are (in no particular order):

Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR)
Philosophy East and West
Journal of Chinese Philosophy
Journal of the American Oriental Society
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
History of Religions
The Journal of Asian Studies
Artibus Asiae
T’oung Pao
Asian Folklore Studies
Current Anthropology
World Archaeology

(2) Getting access

Nearly all internet archives store journal articles in Adobe pdf format. Access therefore involves downloading a pdf file to your PC. You will of course need Adobe Reader (it’s free) to open these files, but you will not be able to alter them – they are read-only. They are actually photocopies of the original journal article.

The problem comes with using the archive itself. Most of them are fee or subscription based, and downloading individual journal articles can be extremely expensive for an unaffiliated individual. Nearly all colleges and universities and many large public libraries subscribe to these archives. You can access them as a student or under their sponsorship.

If you live near a college or university, go to the library and ask a librarian about using the internet archive services. Many will oblige you as a service to the community. Most will be impressed with your sincerity and willing to help. If you are a student, then find out how to access internet archives through your school.

Remember, these journal articles are downloaded pdf files. If you are using a public computer, be sure to have a blank CD or flash drive with you to store your downloads.

(3) Tips for using Google Scholar

- Search with the most specific key words you can think of. If you make general searches, use strings of key words to identify what you are looking for. After awhile you will be familiar with author’s names. For example, William G. Boltz is currently the greatest living expert on the archaic Chinese language in the West. Searching on his name might be very fruitful.

- Go beyond looking for articles specifically about the Yi. In general, scholars have not been terribly interested in the Yi itself, but the book is so important in Chinese culture, that there are thousands of references to it in passing while other topics are being discussed.

- Don’t spurn older articles. Some of the stuff written years ago is classic, and laid the foundation for what people are writing about today.

- Book reviews are fantastic! You will find many, many reviews of academic books on Scholar. They are wonderful because they tell you what’s in the book (so you don’t have to read it) and evaluate the contents. Academe is extremely competitive, and every academic reviewer feels pressure to make some sort of original contribution or insight in the context of a book review on somebody else’s work. Sort of the “I’m as clever as you are” syndrome. But that’s all gain for the reader, who just wants to know what’s what.

- Read the abstracts. Often articles have quikie summaries called abstracts that briefly describe the contents. To find out whether you want to spend the time or the resources to read the article, read the abstract first. This stuff is often not easy to read (academics are often terrible writers).

- Talk to a librarian. Poor things, they only want to help. And you won’t believe what they know!

- Some articles are free of charge. You’ll notice them because they don’t belong to an archive. Sometimes academics post drafts of their articles on their own or college websites. Also look for Master’s Degree theses – these make excellent reading, and they tend to be more accessible than PhD theses.

- Don’t get scared off by the jargon. Believe me, anything with the word “hermeneutics” in it is probably something you want to know about. Keep a dictionary handy, or Google the arcane words. Wikipedia is an inexhaustible source of up-to-date academic information.

- If you can only access one archive, pick JSTOR.

I work for a college, and I’ve been surfing academic archives for about two years. I now have more than 1500 scholarly articles on subjects relevant to the Yi. Unfortunately, it’s going to take me 50 years to read them all. Worst of all, I find myself losing interest in the whole thing. But that’s me, not you – and that’s why I wrote all this, for you.

Good luck!

Lindsay

 

[Sparhawk]

- If you can only access one archive, pick JSTOR.

I work for a college, and I’ve been surfing academic archives for about two years. I now have more than 1500 scholarly articles on subjects relevant to the Yi. Unfortunately, it’s going to take me 50 years to read them all. Worst of all, I find myself losing interest in the whole thing. But that’s me, not you – and that’s why I wrote all this, for you.

Great advise, Lindsay!

I'm half way to your 1500 articles!! Which makes me wonder what you have in the other half... Really, I spent more than three months, in my spare time, combing the indexes of the publications you mentioned above. First I used keyword searches and then dove into the indexes to make sure I've got everything interesting. Some of those publications go back to the mid 1800's, all the way to our present. Those indexes are monumental! BTW, I wish "Early China" articles were available through JStor...

Sigh, I wish I could openly share more without looking over my shoulder for the copyright police.

 

[fkegan]

Hi Lindsay,
Excellent instructions. I have an academic question for you to ponder with your many pages of text--is there anything WRITTEN about Yin before Confucius? When I ask Lienshan or others into older texts, they note markings on pottery of perhaps numbers or lines undivided and divided, but not any actual text before Confucius.

My suspicion is that one of Confucius innovations was to create the notion of two separate but equal entities with one properly in command for being odd-numbered and the other yielding since it was even-numbered and thus easily split into two equal parts.

I wonder if there is anything in the academic literature. I tried Google scholar which first asked did I want Lin not Yin, then under Yin and Yang got mostly other topics except for an article of modern psychology about Yang and Yin in Japanese Self.

If, indeed, Confucius is the first to write about Yin (or Yin and Yang) rather than just use the numbers or symbols that seems a major achievement of the Gentleman.

Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

Some info about that...

How early did this concept of a fundamental Duality find tangible expression in Chinese culture? Although the terms "yin" and "yang" do not appear in surviving texts until quite late in Chinese history probably not until the beginning of the fourth century B.C. ~- we can never be sure that they, or some equivalent terms, were not mentioned in the ancient volumes that were destroyed during the Burning of the Books by order of the First Ch'in Emperor in 315 B.c., or in the thoroughgoing destruction of his palaces a few years later. However, the basic idea of a dualism would seem to have already been present in China as early as the middle of the second millennium B.C. We can
infer this from certain highly emphasized motifs on the bronze artifacts of the Shang dynasty (1700?-1027 B.c.).

Some Early Chinese Symbols of Duality
Author(s): Schuyler Cammann
Source: History of Religions, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Feb., 1985), pp. 215-254
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062255​

 

[lindsay]

Hi Frank -

Yes, I'm interested in Yin/Yang too - and I will surely be looking for references in the material I've garnished. Using Google Scholar, I always search with the word "Chinese" as one of my parameters. Most articles about things Chinese include the word "Chinese" somewhere in the text, and this word screens out a lot of endless scientific reports on polypeptides and mitochondria.

One last word of advice: Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to search on the word "oracle". You will never see, even in a hundred pages of results, any reference to divination.

Luis -

I would love to make the whole batch of 1500+ articles (5 CDs) available to everybody. After all, journals do not pay for these articles, and academics are supposedly writing for the general enlightenment of mankind. But the copyright laws are unclear, and I have a recurring dream that I'm sitting in a cell with four other convicts.

The one with the scar down the side of his face says, "So, hey, what're you dudes doing here? I murdered an old lady last night."

Convict #2 says: "Grand theft auto."

Convict #3 says: "I robbed a bank."

Convict #4 says: "Assault and battery."

My turn. I clear my throat and say, "Infringement of copyright."

Everybody turns pale and stares down at the floor. Nobody can meet my eyes.

Lindsay

 

[sergio]

Thanks Lindsay! Thanks for the tip and advise.I'll certainly look into it.
Sergio

 

[fkegan]

Hi Lindsay,
Actually, Luis' quote noting that the terms "Yin" and "Yang" don't appear until after Confucius is all the academic confirmation I need. The ideas that were about, like that article of Luis' favorite author SC, but duality is a long way from Yang-Yin. Lao Tzu poem 42 notes Tao begets 1, 1 begot 2, 2 begot 3 and 3 begot the myriad. Duality as an addition to Monad and Triad (and Tetrad---myriad) is a whole separate philosophy from Yang and Yin as separate but equal foundation of all.

What I would suggest in your happy wanderings through the academic pages is look for where Yang/Yin appear in relation to Confucian commentary of proper balance between folks vs. Yang/Yin as descriptions of the gestalt process of perception. I have seen Western articles reject Chinese gestalt notions on the ground that they appear in European academia in the 19th century, so they assume the Chinese could not have known them in ancient times. A great joke to me.

Personally, it seems clear that meditation with its focus upon the human limitations of perception is a far easier and faster way to achieve gestalt insights than European efforts to find how things should appear to angels as an alternative to dealing with human limitations in observation.

I am already well aware that the academic can not accept oracles at all. There is a thread under divination news about a Canadian Yi Jing society based upon the doctrine that they are trying to stamp out the notion of the Yi as a divination text. That again is pure medieval Scholasticism based upon the notion that divination isn't Church based and thus must be Satanic.

Having been raised in a family of major Intellectual property lawyers, I find your paranoia of being imprisoned for scholarly copyright infringement a bit over the top. The copyright law is mostly about fighting over cash profits from massive reprints of mass market items and getting attorney's fees awarded as adding insult to injury. The line between fair use and infringement is too vague for non-commercial prison terms--though of course if you quote something in Arabic the current courts in the U.S. might want to have you waterboarded in October to help raise the terror threat level as an election ploy.

Frank

 

[dobro p]

My turn. I clear my throat and say, "Infringement of copyright."

Everybody turns pale and stares down at the floor. Nobody can meet my eyes.

Don't sell yourself short. For 1500 articles it'd be 'Infringement of copyright bigtime'.

 

[Sparhawk]

Actually, Luis' quote noting that the terms "Yin" and "Yang" don't appear until after Confucius is all the academic confirmation I need. The ideas that were about, like that article of Luis' favorite author SC, but duality is a long way from Yang-Yin. Lao Tzu poem 42 notes Tao begets 1, 1 begot 2, 2 begot 3 and 3 begot the myriad. Duality as an addition to Monad and Triad (and Tetrad---myriad) is a whole separate philosophy from Yang and Yin as separate but equal foundation of all.

I understand concepts predate nomenclature, not the other way around... So, hanging on to the names--yin & yang, in this case--as a measure of the inception of the concept behind them, IMO, is wrong.

Not sure what to make of the snidely dismissive comment. I don't have a favorite author. I search for keywords and I quote articles based on what I find in them that is relevant to the question. Search engines have no favorites.

 

[jesed]

Lindsay finally got a relieve in prision.. someone has been imprisionated because "author discrimination" felony

Now, seriously.. thanks Lindsay and Luis for this interchange. Academics can DO a great service for our studies... but on the other hand, can lead us astray for our path.

Knowledge without wisdom is dangerous; wisdom without knowledge is useless. Isn't?

Best

 

[Sparhawk]

Certainly. I would say that knowing what your path is is a big step towards wisdom. Otherwise, one would never know if it is on or off of it...

 

[fkegan]

I understand concepts predate nomenclature, not the other way around... So, hanging on to the names--yin & yang, in this case--as a measure of the inception of the concept behind them, IMO, is wrong.

Not sure what to make of the snidely dismissive comment. I don't have a favorite author. I search for keywords and I quote articles based on what I find in them that is relevant to the question. Search engines have no favorites.

Hi Luis,
It's not the names or the concepts, but the commentary or theory that I was intrigued by. Broken and unbroken or odd/even numbers are their own world. Confucian social and moral relations are their own innovation. Yin and Yang, from their ideograms are gestalt terms a third reality. Today they are clearly all fused together or confused. If there is nothing written before Confucius citing Yin as a separate but equal balancing reality to Yang, then all else is conjecture and there is no source available to deny contrary theories.

The names Yang and Yin express one set of concepts, the Confucian commentary a very different set of concepts and metaphors. Without text there is no way to prove which set of thinking arose when and went where. My thinking is that Confucius did to Yi philosophy what Plato did to Pythagorean--turned subjective universality into objective parochiality which got even more of a mess with the Imperial Civil Service Exam and the study prep for it (as the Am Fed of Astrologers did with their attempt to combat academic disdain for astrology by making an academic-like objective astrology test that signifies nothing but their own silliness).

You deny having a favorite author, yet you can not explain his theory you say has to be known about the trigrams. I term him your favorite since you promote him and his mystery so. I have seen the first snippet of, I believe two of his articles and even those few sentences give me the feeling the fellow has nothing relevant to actually say about the trigrams, origin or meaning or sequence.

Of course, I find their meaning arises straight from their line structure independent of any number theory or language basis or philosophical system such as duality and their various sequences arise from their graphical pattern or meaning. From my perspective all the philosophy and language stuff is a later gloss upon the hard skeleton of the line patterns themselves in terms of Yang focus lines in the open gua matrix. Simplifies things tremendously.

Everyone has favorites, even search engines. They have a fundamental algorithm which they favor. Maruyama,M "Metaorganization of Information" General Systems Yearbook Vol. XI circa '68. Where he speaks of hierarchical organization of European languages [and keyword searches] vs. relational organization of Navajo and Chinese vs relevant organization when you ask your question of the librarian in terms of what you seek and she remembers what it is you need and gives you the exact citation to find exactly what you want right then. So, when you make a reference as librarian in terms of what you find relevant to the question there is absolutely your personal preference and judgment of what is relevant involved.

Dobro,
I would disagree that a library of 1500 scholarly works shared for scholarly research is infringement at all--Fair Use to the max. And more to the point. If Lindsay got indicted on a Bill of particulars seeking a prison term, I strongly recommend my big brother to defend him and maintain the family tradition of never having a client go to jail for a copyright beef.

From first principles, the point of the Copyright Law is to encourage scholarship by giving monopoly protection against the commercial copying for profit of the author's new creation in exchange for making the ideas available to society. It is a fundamental perversion of the Copyright concept to even frighten researchers with fears of prison for their scholarly endeavors in community. It is the weird greed of the anti-Napster music moguls which I blame for such rampant paranoia. That is all about the dinosaurs of old style capitalism still trying to survive the onslaught of the Internet mammals.

I feel like O'Henry's Man About Town when the question of sidewalks in his hometown came up at the bar (tavern). Talk about copyright law and I am back being 6 years old arguing the law at the dinner table...

Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

You deny having a favorite author, yet you can not explain his theory you say has to be known about the trigrams. I term him your favorite since you promote him and his mystery so. I have seen the first snippet of, I believe two of his articles and even those few sentences give me the feeling the fellow has nothing relevant to actually say about the trigrams, origin or meaning or sequence.

If you say so... I guess my dead friend, his theories and me, will remain a mystery.

 

[fkegan]

If you say so... I guess my dead friend, his theories and me, will remain a mystery.

Hi Luis,
A mystery, I don't think so. Just a reference without a comment. Sorry to hear your friend is dead.
Frank

 

[fkegan]

Certainly. I would say that knowing what your path is is a big step towards wisdom. Otherwise, one would never know if it is on or off of it...

Hi Luis,
One's path or trail is also one's Tao and knowing what your Tao is would be the introspection of a lifetime. How would one get off your Tao? Or in the alternative get your Tao off? And is being on one's Tao a big step towards wisdom or just a little step, one foot in front of the other beginning one's life journey of myriad li?

Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

Hi Luis,
One's path or trail is also one's Tao and knowing what your Tao is would be the introspection of a lifetime. How would one get off your Tao? Or in the alternative get your Tao off? And is being on one's Tao a big step towards wisdom or just a little step, one foot in front of the other beginning one's life journey of myriad li?

Frank

You are certainly trying very hard... I was replying to Jesed, Frank...

 

[jesed]

Hi Luis
Well, you know. Right now my path was directed to take a beer... but I got astray from it, and here i am making a fool of myself.

Certainly, it would be wiser follow my original path

Cheers

 

[Sparhawk]

May I join you?? I need a tequila con sangrita...

 

[jesed]

I can handle a beer; but one tequila and I may transform yijing forum into a pendential tabern (with broken tables, and flying glasses) jajajaja

Best

don't worry; i will restrain myself ompom:

 

[Sparhawk]

don't worry; i will restrain myself ompom:

Good boy! Have the tequila "after" the reply...

(sorry people, this is a cross-forum issue that doesn't pertain to Clarity. Just in case this incites long paragraphs from other members... )