wandelaar

https://www.amazon.com/Development-Decline-Chinese-Cosmology/dp/0982321244 Maybe this book is relevant?

OK - but now as regards the consultation of the I Ching by ordinary people about day to day problems. How are those results explained by the ganying doctrine?

Ah - that might well have been a topic of mine. I think it was this one: Some answers were given there. It is important to realise that Taoism has a long history with many paths and bypaths. So for one type of Taoist the I Ching might be a crucial part of his practice and for another type of Taoist it might by a silly superstition.

Ah! So according to the ganying doctrine everything happens harmonious and regular as long as (important) people don't cause disturbances by acting immoral or outrageous, but when (important) people do act immoral or outrageous than catastrophic events will happen that we in the modern western world would consider as chance-events. And that's why events that deviate from the known regular and harmonious patterns were looked upon - in Han-China - as possible messages. Do I understand correctly?

My hope is that others who do know something about the alternative perspectives on chance related to the I Ching will have their say here. I cannot do so because I don't know anything about it, but I am willing to learn...

Consider the following case: You consult the I Ching about an upcoming event and the hexagram you get seems to give a clear warning about what could go wrong. But the way the event actually turns out is quite different. Do you then leave it at that? Or do you look for another meaning of the hexagram? Or do you perhaps consider the hexagram to apply to another situation or question than originally asked?

That's an interesting issue worthy of its own topic. Started:

Maybe not. When the I Ching is somehow dependent on a spiritual entity it could be that the entity in question doesn't like critical investigators. In that case the results a critical investigator gets could deviate considerably from the results of a "believer". See also: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/sheep-goat-effect Such an effect however is not in principle beyond scientific investigation, but one would have to use a specially designed experimental set up to investigate it.

Different answers - and that is OK with me. This topic is meant to investigate what I Ching users do when the found hexagram doesn't seem to relate to the question asked. Apparently there is no "orthodox or standard way" to deal with this, or is there?

https://translate.google.nl/#nl/en/Lijn 3%3A Dichtbij herten%2C maar zonder voorbereid te zijn. Overwegend om midden het bos in te gaan. De edele schijnt bijna niet te stoppen. Verder gaan is inadequaat. Een bijzondere gelegenheid doet zich voor%2C waar men echter niet op voorbereid is. Om hiervan gebruik te maken is het noodzakelijk zich diep in een onbekende situatie te begeven. Dit is niet zo'n goed idee%2C men dient de verleiding te weerstaan. This is part prediction, part warning. But at least today nothing of the kind happened. Do you thinks all aspects of the hexagram's meaning always somehow apply?

The point is that the decision as it actually was taken today implies that essentially everything stays the same, which is precisely what I hoped for. I didn't ask the I Ching what would happen, I asked the I Ching for advise about what to do as regards the decision. I have to add that the decision partly depended on how I presented my case today. Well - I guess this whole description has by now become quite oracular in itself. But basically this topic is meant to be on what to do with hexagrams that don't seem to answer the questions asked.So maybe we could now focus on that?

As I understood that in ancient times the I Ching was simply asked for advise on an upcoming event without asking any exactly formulated question, I didn't do so either. I just presented the upcoming event to the I Ching by holding it in my thoughts with the idea that the I Ching would then give me some advise about how to deal with it...

Everything was going well, but the decision that was taken today could have caused me a lot of trouble. Happily I was allowed to proceed as I was already doing. So I didn't even want to start anything new, the danger of the situation consisted in the opposite possibility that I would be forced to take another road with doubtful prospects. That's all I can say about it.

I don't want to tell the details, but today something important was to be decided and some days ago (as an experiment) I consulted the I Ching online for advise. This was the result: https://www.eclecticenergies.com/nederlands/itjing/consultatie?lns=986878 But today I did my best and all went well, and no unexpected special opportunity presented itself. Actually my main interest in this topic is how experienced I Ching users deal with such cases.

How about on the path?

I was about to write that a part is not the whole of the whole, but then I thought about an infinite counterexample: Let A = {{{... ...}}} then A= {B} with B = {{... ...}}, but B = A. So a part can be identical to the whole. Perhaps we just don't know.

Before I knew anything about it I thought the I Ching was literally thrown like Mikado sticks and the pattern of the fallen sticks was then studied and interpreted. At some sites the I Ching is explained that way. Has this any basis in historical facts?

That's a doubtful advantage, because one won't learn anything either.

Sometimes a few words are much better than loads of pictures...

I completely agree with that, but one shouldn't call those other ways of dealing with the world science. The other ways you mention don't produce scientific knowledge but suggest ways of proceeding or creative points of view. Nothing wrong with that where science fails. Now the I Ching can be used as an "unscientific way" of dealing with the world, where a "scientific way" would be either impractical or impossible. Again, nothing wrong with that. But what I am trying to do is something different. The process of using the I Ching is itself a phenomenon that can be observed scientifically. Most likely such a study will demonstrate certain patterns that appear time and again and can thus be considered fundamental to how the I Ching works (at least for the time being). That is the kind of scientific knowledge of the working of the I Ching that I am looking for.

Current economics let alone think tanks both have a huge ideological bias. I wouldn't consider them as examples of the scientific method. But let's wait till I have some concrete results to show, I welcome more to the point criticism on what I'm doing.

I think there is still too much Stoicism in there to be truly Taoist, at least in the philosophical sense. Chuang tzu was hurt when his wife died, but he quickly recovered. This is the idea of the grass bending under the storm, but quickly veering up again after the storm has past. The Taoist sage is not completely without feeling. But there is a part of the Taoist sage that cannot be harmed though: that is the non-personal part that makes us part of the grand transformations of the world. The more we place our value in that non-personal part of ours the less we will be concerned about what happens to us as an individual. At least that is how I see the Taoist sage on the basis of the writings of Lao tzu and Chuang tzu - outside of philosophical Taoism it might be different.

Yes - but how are you going to evaluate my results then? Are you just going to compare my results to your own and than pick and choose in the manner of a New Age thinker who cites science where he likes its results and condemns science where he doesn't like its results? Using the I Ching in the usual manner and evaluating its effectiveness by naively noticing how effective it appears to be when used in the contexts of daily life without statistically or otherwise verifying how accurate it actually is (that is: without applying some form of scientific evaluation) is extremely inaccurate. When you are familiar with the sceptical arguments you should know that. The scientific method is not infallible, but it is hugely superior to naive observation. The scientific method also takes much more hard work to apply than naive observation, and that's why in daily life it is hardly ever used. Not because the scientific method is less accurate than naive observation, but because it takes incomparably more work to apply. The scientific method when properly applied also asks for a self-critical attitude that is quite the reverse of what you see everywhere else. If I have to distrust something it is naive observation that I distrust, not the scientific method. Nevertheless I am happy that you and others are willing to follow and commend on what I am doing. It is a rare thing to see people reach out beyond the belief-disbelief boundary in a spirit of friendly discussion.

Perhaps that is because it isn't a science at all? The idea is magnificent enough: 1. We have the hexagrams that symbolize the basic situations that can appear in the world. 2. The world is dynamic so situations continually change into other situations as represented by hexagrams with changing lines. 3. So all kinds of dynamic processes should be understandable when represented in terms of hexagrams. But that's about where it stops. (Sure, some Boolean algebra has been done with the hexagrams, but that hasn't helped our understanding of worldly phenomena either.) I have a great many books on the "science of the I Ching" because it looked as such a promising idea, but none of those books moves beyond the above points 1,2,3 in any convincing manner. There is no science of the I Ching worthy of the name science. Or at least, I haven't seen any. But if you or anybody else thinks there is, please let me know. I will be happy to start another topic on that.

Well - I have ordered yarrow stalks myself, and I will do my own experiments as soon as they arrive. As my first project I will empirically investigate the probabilities of the different types of lines. Further I don't believe that the scientific method is inherently unsuitable for investigating the I Ching. In my experience the problem is rather that most I Ching users don't want to "desecrate" the mystery of the I Ching by using something as non-spiritual as science for its investigation. There are lots of scientific experiments with the I Ching that could be done, but that apparently haven't been done for the simple reason that nobody wanted to do them. I will see what I can do.