• "A very substantial contribution to the field of Chinese
studies. The scholarship is prodigious. There are similar works
in Chinese, but in the West this book stands very much alone.”
— Edward Shaughnessy, University of Chicago, author of Rewriting
Early Chinese Texts and translator of I Ching: The Classic
of Changes
• "A major contribution to the fields of Chinese intellectual
history and religion. To my knowledge it is the first work in a
Western language that attempts an overall picture of the place of
the Yijing in Chinese history and culture.”
—Joseph A. Adler, Kenyon College, author of Chinese Religious
Traditions and coauthor of Sung Dynasty Uses of the "I
Ching"
• "Picking up from where he left off with his important
volume Fortune-tellers and Philosophers, Richard Smith carefully
shows how for more than two thousand years Chinese intellectuals
of all varieties used the complexities and mysteries of the Yijing
to voice their opinions about the past, the present, and the future."
—Benjamin A. Elman, Princeton University, author of From
Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change
in Late Imperial China and On Their Own Terms: Science
in China, 1550-1900
|
Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World:
The Yijing (I-Ching, or Classic of
Changes) and Its Evolution in China |
| |
| Richard J. Smith |
| 448 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 |
| 42 b&w illustrations |
| Cloth 978-0-8139-2705-3 • $35.00 |
| June 2008 |
 |
Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World is the first
full-length study in any Western language of the development of
the Yijing in China from earliest times to the present.
Drawing on the most recent scholarship in both Asian and Western
languages, Richard J. Smith offers a fresh perspective on virtually
every aspect of Yijing theory and practice for some three
thousand years. Smith introduces the reader to the major works,
debates, and schools of interpretation surrounding this ancient
text, and he shows not only how the Classic of Changes
was used in China as a book of divination but also how it served
as a source of philosophical, psychological, literary, and artistic
inspiration.
Among its major contributions, this study reveals with many vivid examples the richness, diversity, vitality, and complexity of traditional Chinese thought. In the process, it deconstructs a number of time-honored interpretive binaries that have adversely affected our understanding of the Yijing--most notably the sharp distinction between the "school of images and numbers" (xiangshu) and the "school of meanings and principles" (yili). The book also demonstrates that, contrary to prevailing opinion among Western scholars, the rise of "evidential research" (kaozheng xue) in late imperial China did not necessarily mean the decline of Chinese cosmology. Smith’s study reveals a far more nuanced intellectual outlook on the part of even the most dedicated kaozheng scholars, as well as the remarkable persistence of Chinese "correlative" thinking to this very day.
Finally, by exploring the fascinating modern history of the Yijing, Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World attests to the tenacity, flexibility, and continuing relevance of this most remarkable Chinese classic.
Richard J. Smith is George and Nancy Rupp
Professor of Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University.
He is author, coauthor, or coeditor of a dozen scholarly books,
including China’s Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912
and Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays
in Chinese Thought.
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