Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China (Richard Lectures) Review

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Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China (Richard Lectures) ReviewThis one-volume historical survey of the development and use of the Yijing from prehistory to today is long on breadth and short on depth. The breadth is impressive and the lack of depth is excusable. The book, by Professor Richard Smith of Rice University, is chock-full of nuggets of information not otherwise accessible, especially to non-Chinese readers, nuggets enough to supply a whole generation of graduate students with Ph.D. dissertation topics. For example, Smith brings to our attention that Yan Fu, in the foreword to his translation of Thomas Huxley's "On Evolution," argued that the Yijing "offered a cogent explanation of scientific processes such as natural selection." And, Smith writes, "the anarchist Liu Shipei used a detailed analysis of the judgments, images, and line statements of the Yijing to show an affinity between what he considered to be the concerns of modern Western sociology and the 'learning of the Changes.'" Liu thus "believed that the Yijing, like the number-based theories and practices of modern sociology, could be used for what might today be called 'social engineering.'" Smith also relates how Yijing symbolism has been interpreted in sexual terms by past and contemporary scholars--a use rarely spoken of elsewhere. Most of the book's nearly 400 pages contain such nuggets. As a survey volume, covering more than three millennia, it is necessarily short on depth and cannot be faulted for what comes naturally. To give an idea of the volume's comprehensiveness, Smith's bibliography includes nineteen pages of Asian-language works and twenty-four pages of Western-language works. Best of all, Smith generally adopts an unbiased stance on most issues, letting the proponents and opponents of various positions present their cases and weighing all sides judiciously. The result is a unique and indispensable reference history.
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