Zahl und Diagramm. Aspekte formaler Argumentation im Werk des Liu Mu der chinesischen Song-Zeit (960–1279)

Description

The question of historical precursors of today's quantitatively supported argumentation and visualisation of data, as well as their function in gaining and communicating knowledge, is highly topical. The Book of Changes Yijing 易經 is one of the most important texts of traditional China, and itself a combination of various types of signs (script, image, number and diagram). Knowledge accumulated in the rich commentary tradition on the Yijing and tested in practical application for divination provided a primary source for various fields of traditional Chinese cosmology, with a general tendency to seek convergence of thematically distant and often heterodox fields of knowledge. The work Yishu gouyin tu 易數鉤隱圖 by Liu Mu 劉牧 of the Northern Song period (960 - 1126) is the voice that revived Yijing studies after the end of the Tang dynasty. His work, hitherto unrecognised and neglected by scholars due to various difficulties and coincidences in the history of ideas, presents a meticulous world view based on numbers. From the first things of the cosmos to concepts of nature, calendars, divination and the teaching of virtue to family relationships, anatomy and music, quantitative and qualitative properties of numbers form the fault lines of an effort striving for theoretical unification of these areas. Only in the medium of diagrams do the abstract idiosyncratic trains of thought of cosmological order become explicable and comprehensible. The assumption of a formal rigour claiming explainability of the world, which speaks from the considered testimonies, is illuminated in detail in its traditional influences, its philosophical cross-references as well as its controversial reception.