The most ancient book ? led to our most modern machine - The Computer.

In the seventeenth century, a Jesuit missionary in China, Father Bouvet, wrote about the I Ching to his friend Gottfried von Leibniz, the philosopher and mathematician. Leibniz discovered in the pattern of the I Ching the principles of binary arithmetic and calculus, the foundation of every computer calculation performed today.

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is the most widely read of the five Chinese Classics. The book was traditionally written by the legendary Chinese Emperor Fu Hsi (2953-2838 B.C.). It is possible that the the I Ching originated from a prehistoric divination technique which dates back as far as 5000 B.C

This ancient divination system is the most intricate numerically-based oracle ever devised.

An I Ching interpretation is performed by making six binary decisions (a hexagram). This is called 'casting the I Ching'. These are written down as a stack of six solid or broken lines. This was traditionally done either by tossing yarrow stalks or coins, although there is no reason why the hexagrams can't be generated by some other means (such as a computer program).


The basic component of the I Ching is a three lined symbol called the Trigram. Each of the three lines in a trigram can either be straight or broken. A straight line symbolizes Yang: A broken line stands for Yin.

Yang ______________

Yin _____ _____


There are actually four possible values for each of the lines; the two on/off values, and a line which changes from on to off or vice versa. Thus one cast of the I Ching can generate several different hexagrams, which adds depth to the interpretation. The sophistication of this method has not escaped modern interpretation, and the four-valued logic has been compared to the biochemistry of DNA amino acids. How a Neolithic shamans' divination technique presaged the basic logic of the human genome is one of the ageless mysteries.

source: http://www.geocities.com/tasosmit2001/iching.htm

anyone esle got more info on this?

Interesting Roswell. I've never studied the I Ching, but I'm sure its worth the effort. Good article.

Seems to be a lot of stuff about china this month

first for ages actually
cant knock them
after all 1/4 ppl are chinese

I'm not
i'm 25% german 25% welsh 50% english
and i can prove it
mind you theres a possibility that my sister has a little chinese in her
she used to date a guy called lee
very suspicious if you ask me

especially if first name is chum
lol