Yin and yang

In Chinese philosophy , the yin (zh-Hant 陰 or zh-Hans 阴; Pinyin: yīn ) and the yang (zh-Hant 陽 or zh-Hans 阳; yáng ) is two symbiotic and complementary categories, that one can find in all the aspects of the life and the Univers. This concept of complementarity is important, more especially as the Western thought thinks more readily dualism in the form of opposition than of complementarity. In Chinese cosmology, in fact the two entities follow the original breath IQ to work in all things.

For example:

• the Yin is associated with the the Moon which represents the female share nature;
• the Yáng is associated with the Sun which represents the male share nature.

According to the Shuowen jiezi , dictionary of the Dynasty Han, the direction of yin is: “sinks, the south of water or the north of the mountain”; that of yang is “strong brightness”.

Some proposed that the terms yin and yang would come from the words Sanskrit S Linga and Yoni. Nevertheless, they appear before the introduction of the Bouddhisme (vehicle of the Indian culture) in China. One indeed finds them in chapter 42 of the CAD De Jing : “The CAD gives rise to the one, one to both, both to the three, the three with the dix-mille things and beings, the dix-mille things and beings support the yang and embrace the yin”.

The symbol yin-yang, called in China “fish yin and yang”, the form most widespread of the tàijítú of the taoists and the néo-Confucianists, represents the CAT resulting from the dynamics of these two principles, the unit beyond the Dualisme.

Characterization

The points of opposed colors, called biaoli in Chinese medicine, recall that these two concepts are bound, follow one another mutually and that one exists thanks to the different one.

Starting from the analytical approach, which consists in considering the Yin separately, then the Yáng, the biaoli is enough to characterize the thought Confucianist, and its specific advantage - the Amitié - compared to the Dualisme to which one too often reduces the Occidental culture, and its approaches Christian woman or Cartesian - other Dualisme, source of Double constraint.

The Amitié (between points of sights or physical environments) is the principle which makes it possible entities (morals or physics) opposite to communicate between them.

Symbols present in the table unicode:

• Tàijítú :☯ (position: U+262F);
• Yīn : zh-Hant 陰 and zh-Hans 阴 (respectively code U+9670 and U+9634);
• Yáng : zh-Hant 陽 and zh-Hans 阳 (respectively code U+967D and U+9633);
• Qì : zh-Hant 氣 and zh-Hant 气 (respectively code U+6C23 and U+6C14);

Relations between the yin and the yang

All can be described in term of yin and yang, which is:

• in relation of opposition, while knowing that, as shows it the Taijitu , each of both door in him the germ of the other;
• in relation of interdependence, one not conceiving itself without the other; the excess or the deficiency of one of both involves consequences on the other and an imbalance of the unit;
• in relation of production and change of the one in the other, such as for example when the day makes place at the night;
• the yin and the yang can each one be subdivided in subelements yin and yang; thus, if one distinguishes only two categories in the concept of temperature, the cold is yin and heat yang, but it is possible to subdivide the concept of heat into two according to any criterion (supportability for example), and to distinguish a heat yin and a heat yang.

Some correspondences yin-yang

It is not a question of absolute correspondences, since they are allotted only inside a given couple of opposites.

So one cannot really say that something is Yin, That another thing is Yang. It would be more exact to say than something is more Yin compared to another thing which is more Yang. For example, the movement of rise is Yang compared to the movement of descent which is Yin. In any thing there is of Yin and of Yang, like famous the so well famous symbol of Tai Ji, because it is the interaction of these two forces which create the movement, the IQ, energy. And as an expert of quantum physics would say it so well: matter and energy are in fact only one and even thing.

Western interpretations

• “the Chinese Philosophie (at least in all the known part of its history (151) is dominated by the concepts of Yin and Yáng. All the interpreters recognize it. All also consider these emblems with the nuance of respect which sticks under the philosophical terms and which forces to see in them the expression of an erudite thought. Inclined to interpret Yin and Yang in their lending the strict value which seems to be appropriate for doctrinal creations, they hasten to qualify these Chinese symbols by borrowing terms from the definite language of the philosophers of Occident. As they declare all evenly sometimes as Yin and Yang are forces, sometimes that they are substances. Those which treat them forces - such is, in general, the opinion of the contemporary critics Chinese - there find the advantage of bringing closer these antiques emblems to the symbols whose uses modern physics (152). The others - they are Westerners - intend to react against this anachronistic interpretation (153). They thus affirm (all on the other hand) that Yin and Yang are substances, - without thinking of wondering whether, in the philosophy of old China, the least appearance of a distinction between substances and forces is offered. Tie argument of their definition, they lend to the Chinese thought a tendency towards a substantialist dualism and prepare to discover in CAT the design of a supreme reality similar to a divine principle (154)”. Marcel Granet, the Chinese thought , 1934, republication, p.  101, Albin Michel, 569 pages, Paris, 1968.

• “the Yi-King or Delivers transformations of the antiquated Chinese magic brings the most exemplary image of the identity of Génésique and the Genetics. The circular loop is a cosmogonic circle symbolically swirling by the S interior which at the same time separates and links Yin and Yang. The figure is formed not starting from the center but the periphery and is born from the meeting of opposite movements of directions. Yin and the yang are closely married one in another, but distinct, they are at the same time complementary, competitor, antagonistic. The paramount figure of Yi-King is thus a figure of a nature, of harmony, but bearing in it the swirling idea and the principle of antagonism. It is a figure of complexity”. Edgar Morin, Method 1. The Nature of Nature , p.  228, Threshold, Paris, 1977.

• “Exchange is the result off combinations and separations off the indestructible furnace elements, like has painter mixing colors, said Empedocles; it is governed by two cosmic principles, off Coils (attraction gold Aphrodite), the original source organic unity and creative combination, and Strife (repulsion gold Quarrel), the principle off diversity and differienciation. The life cycle off the cosmos thus oscillates in cycles between unity and diversity (Kahn, 1968). (In the Chinese tradition the cosmic principles are Yin and Yang, and the elements are five: earth, fire, toilets, Wood, and metal. Aristotle reserved the fifth and unchanging element, the “quintessence” gold “ether”, whose “natural” is to move in circles, for the heavenly bodies, which He held to Be perfect and imperishable)”. Anthony Wilden, The Rules are No Range. The Strategy off Communication , p.  153, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 432 pages, London and New York, 1986.

Symbol (representation of the representations) philosophical of “harmonized contrast”, it became a topic popular and easy to skid in “esotericism” at a cheap rate.

This “harmonized contrast” of Yin-Yang is that of the chaud-froid, haut-bas, light-shade, white-black, female-male, of the antagonistic complementarities tangled up with interlaced complementary antagonisms. In optical physics, it is the play of the Onde and the Corpuscule in alternation and dispute joined together by the constant of Louis de Broglie. In Chemistry, it is the Acidité and the joined together Alcalinité, separated and contrasted with pH 7. In philosophy, it is the verb Aufheben of Hegel which means, at the same time, “to appear”, “to disappear” and “to preserve” (in the component Alémanique Souabe), verb used by Freud to describe the Inconscient.

This “harmonized contrast” is quickly diverted in opposition in the “third excluded” from body-spirit, nature-culture. With the values confucéennes, it is the base of the ideology of a industrial Harmonie with the modern Japan with the Japanese Miracle of the years 1950-1960 in the Asian political economy of the antagonistic complementarity enchased in the antagonism complementary to Profit-sharing, Employers-Trade union.

• “the feeling of the harmonious order that the tournaments _126 got for the whole of the beings conferred on bipartite classification such a religious prestige that null other could not exceed it in authority. The Chinese did not condemn themselves to only find order where the bipartition reigned; but the principle of their various classifications did not vary. All imply the analysis of a felt total like more or less complex and, always, this analysis proceeds of an image: this one, any rhythmic and geometrical unit, reveals the distribution, in Space and Time, of the elements between which the total is broken up, so that a numerical emblem follows to announce the mode of grouping of these elements and, consequently, to detect the intimate nature of the total. From where importance of the dependant concepts of Number and Element”, Marcel Granet, pp.  125-126, 1968.

Interactions and entities

Marcel Granet already noticed Western interpretation sometimes that Yin and Yang are forces, sometimes that they are substances. At the origin of the Chinese thought, it is about a configuration of polysystemic interactions of various Orders of a Totality, very distant from an analysis or cutting in increasingly held, simple and disjoined elements. It is in their interactions that the elements become mutually understandable, as in the relations between Autonomie and heteronomy, Crise and conflict.

• “the difference between the Newtonian world and that of the communication holds, simply, with the fact that the first allots a reality to the objects and arrives to a certain theoretical simplicity by excluding the context from the context, therefore in fact, any metarelation and, a fortiori, any retreat ad infinitum in the chain of such relations. ” (Gregory Bateson, p.  72, Towards an ecology of the spirit. 2, Threshold, Paris, 1980).

The ecosystemic Approche is the meeting again with the Chinese thought antique of the cybernetic oscillation “figure-bottom” of a Gestalt or Totality of Yin-Yang, “system and environment” where a system, considering “in bottom” of its components, is a component seen “of in top” of its environment which is a metasystem or system of systems.

• “the united ideas of Order, Total, Effective dominate the thought of the Chinese. They did not worry to distinguish from the reigns in Nature. Any reality is in oneself total. All in the Universe is like the Universe. The matter and the spirit do not appear as two worlds which are opposed. One does not give to the Man a special place by allotting a heart to him which would be of another gasoline only the body. The men carry it in nobility on the other beings only insofar as, having a row in the company, they are worthy to collaborate in the maintenance of the social order, base and model of the universal order. Only are distinguished from the crowd of the beings the Chief, the Wise one, the Honest man. These ideas agree with a representation of the World, characterized not by the Anthropocentrisme, but by the prevalence of the concept of social authority. The installation of the Universe is the effect of a princely Virtue that arts and sciences must get busy to equip. A protocolar ordinance applies to the thought as for the life; the reign of the Label is universal. All is subjected to him in the physical order and the moral order, which one refuses to distinguish by opposing them like a given order and an order from freedom. The Chinese do not conceive the idea of Law. With the things as with the men, they propose only Models. ”, Marcel Granet, p.  281, 1968.

If all the universe is blue, the blue color would not be conceivable, like the “black” (absence of any color) is it only compared to the “white” (presence of all the colors), sinks it compared to light, the night compared to the day, the moon compared to the sun, the winter compared to the summer, North compared to the South, the left compared to the line, the Earth compared to the Sky and the woman compared to the man.

They are the examples of harmonized contrast, of interactions of the ones compared to the others, like the oscillation figure-bottom of this engraving (Day & Nuit) of Escher where it is the contrast which makes the difference of the one compared to the other in the interactions which are of the reciprocal actions modifying the nature or the behavior of the agents.

Infinite divisibility