you will see them everywhere since they are properties of the method we use as a species to interpret 'all there is' - be it real or imagined.Clarity,
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In the interpretation of patterns of the yin/yang dichotomy, as expressed in the symbolisms of the I Ching, it is important to understand that dichotomies come in three classes - one the root and the others stemming from such.
The root form of dichotomy, hard-coded into our brains in the form of hemispheres, is to an asymmetric structure. This reflects a 'complementary' nature of the elements of the dichotomy with the 'yang' element emerging from the yin element.
As such, yang is a label to express a distortion, an exaggeration, particularisation, of the yin. (and so the nature of the male emerges from the female as an exaggeration/distortion of such - and we see this in the entomology of the male sex as we see it in measures of qualities etc)
The other two forms of dichotomy are those of:
Symmetric - a focus on 'opposites' or 'difference in sameness'). These sorts of interpretations give us normal distribution curves etc. They exaggerate the 'complementary' aspect by 'cutting' the chord that links such that male is distinct from female, as is light from dark or positive from negative. In such expressions as '+1/-1' the symmetric focus is on the +/= differences in the core sameness of '1'.
Anti-symmetric - a focus on hierarchy and so rigid ordering; reflected in the IC in the 'family' trigram compass as it is in hexagram 37. Here everything has its qualitative place marked by an ordinal measure (1st son, vs 3rd daughter etc).
In the representations of the IC, the symbolisms used, we can 'map' all three forms of interpretation into each symbol. This ability reflects what our brains do in the processing of meaning where we combine an emotional element with a temporal element.
This ability to combine is done by taking the temporal/emotional elements and applying self-referencing, recursion, to the dichotomy to give us a spectrum of categories representing 'all there is'.
For example, of we use the abstract notation of 0/1 and apply that dichotomy to itself we will get, after three loops, eight symbols:
0/1
00, 01, 10, 11
000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111
In the I Ching we assign yin to '0' and yang to '1' and the above eight symbols represent the trigrams of the I Ching and their associated meanings.
EACH of these symbols is then open to interpretation based on the three identified methods (note that hierarchy comes out of extracting parts from a whole in the form of acquiring a spectrum of the whole.)
This acquisition of a spectrum will automatically order things, parts, from general to particular, from 'low' frequency to 'high' frequency and in so doing elicit differences in precision - the higher the frequency the higher the sample rate in getting information and so the higher the precision and so the more 'discrete' things appear. (our brain 'slices' the continuum we experience into 200 millisecond 'frames' - and so it is like a movie reel)
In our brains we have the distinctions of 'sequence' vs 'magnitude' (emotional expression of high/low, bright/dark, sharp/clear are sensory harmonics in form, there is no explicit, precise, date/time nature, just expression of emotion)
Our 'sequencer' system puts things into date/time 'order' and so gives us a history of emotional events. This ability also applies to an emotion in the form of serialising an emotion, the parallel nature is converted to allow us to extract its parts, its spectrum.
This 'sequencer' develops AFTER our emotions have developed and so reflects the ability to order emotions once the emotions have been created - this is a source of fine details communication.
This sequencer has a 'simple' emotion of its own - a feeling of 'correct sequence', be right/wrong, such that emotionally this sequencer is 'flat' in that its main focus is on date/time and so ordering of events (in our neurology this sequencer is labelled the hippocampus - in the I Ching there is a strong emphasis on this correct/incorrect focus in hexagram 63 that is supposed to represent the 'correct' nature of line positions in hexagrams)
The communication by humans of an intent, when working in parallel, is through the expression of some emotion - anger, love, fear, grief, adoration etc etc
This intent is focused on how to deal with a context, whether to replace it with one's own or to coexist with it. This anger/sex focus on replacement of the existing context by eradication of others and/or replication of self.
The grief/fear focus is more on using the existing context and defence and so to 'disappear' into that context.
All of this emotional expression is 'managed' by a brain part labelled the 'amygdala' where from the self-referencing of the fight/flight dichotomy comes all of the categories of emotions we use to communicate. (see details in http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/emote.html )
Work on projection/transference/counter-transference shows us how it is possible to experience an emotion without a history attached but not a history without an emotion attached (this history is limited to a basic emotion of 'correct' that can be interpreted as if 'emotionless'! It is in fact a core contributor to the development of formal logic, mathematics etc)
These issues of projection etc are covered in a section in the Emotional I Ching:
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/EmotionalIC.html
Of note here is that the bias to magnitudes, to emotional expressions, means that the more 'emotionally-biased' will determine history not as date/time but as an ordering of high/low emotional events. As such, the emotionally-biased will have issues with direction, and the more direction, the more sequence-biased will have issues with emotional expression (they will be 'flat', more syntax focused)
Thus, in the context of the I Ching we have for each trigram/hexagram/dodecagram, three forms of interpretation all derived from properties/methods of self-referencing dichotomies.
The CARDINAL, magnitude focused, form of interpretation treats a hexagram as a complete form and as such we can ignore the lines as markers of 'sequence' other than as markers of qualitative differences (the base line represent a 'general' expression, the top line the more 'particular' expression, more refined.)
It is the cardinal perspective that allows us to extract a hexagram's spectrum in the form of a list of all other hexagrams serving as analogies to describe the make-up of a particular hexagram. (this is where XOR comes from, as does the wave interpretation of building hexagrams:
XOR : http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introXOR.html
Wave : http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/WaveInterpret.html
The ORDINAL, sequence focused, form of interpretations treats a hexagram as a representative of steps where, in the purest of forms, there are six steps, each of equal emotional content ('correct' or 'incorrect' and so reflecting the ordinal focus on all meaning being in position) with the only differences being in their positions (1st line, 3rd line etc). The 'universal' nature of the hexagram means any time duration will be in the form of 6 steps - be the time milliseconds or millennia.
When we mix cardinal with ordinal, and so a magnitude focus with sequence focus we introduce a general to particular form of interpretation operating with the temporal form and this brings out a hierarchic form of interpretation.
It is from the consideration of all forms of interpretation that we can best acquire a detailed understanding of hexagrams. In the traditional material there is a bias to the ordinal form, sequence, form of understanding. The issues of magnitude and hierarchy etc are touched upon but have not been fully understood due to the rigid interpretation of a 'six line' hexagram when in fact we are dealing with qualitative aspects covering 64 'line' combinations etc.
The compass material in the traditional texts uses rich metaphor to try and bring out these differences (e.g. structure of Fu Hsi compass, sequence of King Wen compass, hierarchy of the Family compass) but only now, with work from neurosciences can we map out properly what is going on here.
Note that all of the above commentary on yin/yang applies to ANY dicbotomy operating in ANY discipline since they all come out of what our brains do in deriving meaning.
Chris
-----------------------------
generic categories of meaning:
------------------------------
Objects bias (differentiating):
BLEND - wholeness, whole numbers
BOUND - partness, rational numbers
Relationships bias (integrating):
BOND - share space, irrational numbers
BIND - share time, imaginary numbers
From these come composites as reals, complex, quaternions, octonions. All else follows....
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introIDM.html
The root form of dichotomy, hard-coded into our brains in the form of hemispheres, is to an asymmetric structure. This reflects a 'complementary' nature of the elements of the dichotomy with the 'yang' element emerging from the yin element.
As such, yang is a label to express a distortion, an exaggeration, particularisation, of the yin. (and so the nature of the male emerges from the female as an exaggeration/distortion of such - and we see this in the entomology of the male sex as we see it in measures of qualities etc)
The other two forms of dichotomy are those of:
Symmetric - a focus on 'opposites' or 'difference in sameness'). These sorts of interpretations give us normal distribution curves etc. They exaggerate the 'complementary' aspect by 'cutting' the chord that links such that male is distinct from female, as is light from dark or positive from negative. In such expressions as '+1/-1' the symmetric focus is on the +/= differences in the core sameness of '1'.
Anti-symmetric - a focus on hierarchy and so rigid ordering; reflected in the IC in the 'family' trigram compass as it is in hexagram 37. Here everything has its qualitative place marked by an ordinal measure (1st son, vs 3rd daughter etc).
In the representations of the IC, the symbolisms used, we can 'map' all three forms of interpretation into each symbol. This ability reflects what our brains do in the processing of meaning where we combine an emotional element with a temporal element.
This ability to combine is done by taking the temporal/emotional elements and applying self-referencing, recursion, to the dichotomy to give us a spectrum of categories representing 'all there is'.
For example, of we use the abstract notation of 0/1 and apply that dichotomy to itself we will get, after three loops, eight symbols:
0/1
00, 01, 10, 11
000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111
In the I Ching we assign yin to '0' and yang to '1' and the above eight symbols represent the trigrams of the I Ching and their associated meanings.
EACH of these symbols is then open to interpretation based on the three identified methods (note that hierarchy comes out of extracting parts from a whole in the form of acquiring a spectrum of the whole.)
This acquisition of a spectrum will automatically order things, parts, from general to particular, from 'low' frequency to 'high' frequency and in so doing elicit differences in precision - the higher the frequency the higher the sample rate in getting information and so the higher the precision and so the more 'discrete' things appear. (our brain 'slices' the continuum we experience into 200 millisecond 'frames' - and so it is like a movie reel)
In our brains we have the distinctions of 'sequence' vs 'magnitude' (emotional expression of high/low, bright/dark, sharp/clear are sensory harmonics in form, there is no explicit, precise, date/time nature, just expression of emotion)
Our 'sequencer' system puts things into date/time 'order' and so gives us a history of emotional events. This ability also applies to an emotion in the form of serialising an emotion, the parallel nature is converted to allow us to extract its parts, its spectrum.
This 'sequencer' develops AFTER our emotions have developed and so reflects the ability to order emotions once the emotions have been created - this is a source of fine details communication.
This sequencer has a 'simple' emotion of its own - a feeling of 'correct sequence', be right/wrong, such that emotionally this sequencer is 'flat' in that its main focus is on date/time and so ordering of events (in our neurology this sequencer is labelled the hippocampus - in the I Ching there is a strong emphasis on this correct/incorrect focus in hexagram 63 that is supposed to represent the 'correct' nature of line positions in hexagrams)
The communication by humans of an intent, when working in parallel, is through the expression of some emotion - anger, love, fear, grief, adoration etc etc
This intent is focused on how to deal with a context, whether to replace it with one's own or to coexist with it. This anger/sex focus on replacement of the existing context by eradication of others and/or replication of self.
The grief/fear focus is more on using the existing context and defence and so to 'disappear' into that context.
All of this emotional expression is 'managed' by a brain part labelled the 'amygdala' where from the self-referencing of the fight/flight dichotomy comes all of the categories of emotions we use to communicate. (see details in http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/emote.html )
Work on projection/transference/counter-transference shows us how it is possible to experience an emotion without a history attached but not a history without an emotion attached (this history is limited to a basic emotion of 'correct' that can be interpreted as if 'emotionless'! It is in fact a core contributor to the development of formal logic, mathematics etc)
These issues of projection etc are covered in a section in the Emotional I Ching:
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/EmotionalIC.html
Of note here is that the bias to magnitudes, to emotional expressions, means that the more 'emotionally-biased' will determine history not as date/time but as an ordering of high/low emotional events. As such, the emotionally-biased will have issues with direction, and the more direction, the more sequence-biased will have issues with emotional expression (they will be 'flat', more syntax focused)
Thus, in the context of the I Ching we have for each trigram/hexagram/dodecagram, three forms of interpretation all derived from properties/methods of self-referencing dichotomies.
The CARDINAL, magnitude focused, form of interpretation treats a hexagram as a complete form and as such we can ignore the lines as markers of 'sequence' other than as markers of qualitative differences (the base line represent a 'general' expression, the top line the more 'particular' expression, more refined.)
It is the cardinal perspective that allows us to extract a hexagram's spectrum in the form of a list of all other hexagrams serving as analogies to describe the make-up of a particular hexagram. (this is where XOR comes from, as does the wave interpretation of building hexagrams:
XOR : http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introXOR.html
Wave : http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/WaveInterpret.html
The ORDINAL, sequence focused, form of interpretations treats a hexagram as a representative of steps where, in the purest of forms, there are six steps, each of equal emotional content ('correct' or 'incorrect' and so reflecting the ordinal focus on all meaning being in position) with the only differences being in their positions (1st line, 3rd line etc). The 'universal' nature of the hexagram means any time duration will be in the form of 6 steps - be the time milliseconds or millennia.
When we mix cardinal with ordinal, and so a magnitude focus with sequence focus we introduce a general to particular form of interpretation operating with the temporal form and this brings out a hierarchic form of interpretation.
It is from the consideration of all forms of interpretation that we can best acquire a detailed understanding of hexagrams. In the traditional material there is a bias to the ordinal form, sequence, form of understanding. The issues of magnitude and hierarchy etc are touched upon but have not been fully understood due to the rigid interpretation of a 'six line' hexagram when in fact we are dealing with qualitative aspects covering 64 'line' combinations etc.
The compass material in the traditional texts uses rich metaphor to try and bring out these differences (e.g. structure of Fu Hsi compass, sequence of King Wen compass, hierarchy of the Family compass) but only now, with work from neurosciences can we map out properly what is going on here.
Note that all of the above commentary on yin/yang applies to ANY dicbotomy operating in ANY discipline since they all come out of what our brains do in deriving meaning.
Chris
-----------------------------
generic categories of meaning:
------------------------------
Objects bias (differentiating):
BLEND - wholeness, whole numbers
BOUND - partness, rational numbers
Relationships bias (integrating):
BOND - share space, irrational numbers
BIND - share time, imaginary numbers
From these come composites as reals, complex, quaternions, octonions. All else follows....
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introIDM.html