Yin and yang
Yin is shade, dark and stillness; yang is sunlight, brightness and movement. They are interdependent and transform into each other, as the Book of Changes puts it: "one yin, one yang is called the Way".
Five phases and cycles
The five "agents" first appear as materials in the Book of Documents. Zou Yan turned them into a cycle explaining dynastic change, and Dong Zhongshu of the Han merged them with yin-yang into a political and moral system.
- Generating: wood, fire, earth, metal, water.
- Overcoming: wood, earth, water, fire, metal.
The phases served as a classification matched to directions, seasons, colours, organs and musical notes.
In Korean culture
The five cardinal colours and temple painting (colour harmony), the sexagenary calendar, traditional medicine, the design rationale in the Hunminjeongeum Haerye, and pungsu all draw on it.
Assessment
Joseph Needham analysed it as correlative thinking. It is significant intellectual history but not an experimentally tested scientific theory.
References
- Needham, J. (1956). Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought. Cambridge University Press.
- Graham, A. C. (1986). Yin-Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking. Institute of East Asian Philosophies.
- 풍우란 (1999). 『중국철학사』 (박성규 역). 까치.
- Wang, R. R. (2012). Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture. Cambridge University Press.