Richard J. Smith

As he explains the pervasiveness and tenacity of divination in China, Smith (history, Rice U.) explores not only the connections between various mantric techniques but also the relationship between divination and other facets of Chinese culture, including philosophy, science, and medicine. He concludes with a discussion of divination in 20th- century China and offers comparative reflections and suggestions for further cross-cultural research. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Divination in Traditional Chinese Society

Fortune-Tellers and Philosophers

Daniel Lieberman

Jay Kelley

This volume reviews major topics in human, primate, and mammalian evolution with an emphasis on systematic paleoenvironmental and behavioral questions, and the epistemological problems of interpreting the past with fossil data.

Essays on Human, Primate, and Mammal Evolution in Honor of David Pilbeam

Interpreting the Past

From the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE to the present, the Chinese have been preoccupied with the notion of ordering their world. Efforts to create and maintain order are expressed not only in China’s bureaucratic institutions and methods of social and economic organization but also in Chinese philosophy, religious and secular ritual, and comprehensive systems of classifying all natural and supernatural phenomena. Mapping China and Managing the World focuses on Chinese constructions of order (zhi) and examines the most important ways in which elites in late imperial China sought to order their vast and variegated world. This book begins by exploring the role of ancient texts and maps as the two prominent symbolic devices that the Chinese used to construct cultural meaning, and looks at how changing conceptions of ‘the world’ shaped Chinese cartography, whilst both shifting and enduring cartographic practices affected how the Chinese regarded the wider world. Richard J. Smith goes on to examine the significance of ritual in overcoming disorder, and by focusing on the importance of divination shows how Chinese at all levels of society sought to manage the future, as well as the past and the present. Finally, the book concludes by emphasizing the enduring relevance of the Yijing (Classic of Changes) in Chinese intellectual and cultural life as well as its place in the history of Sino-foreign interactions. Bringing together a selection of essays by Richard J. Smith, one of the foremost scholars of Chinese intellectual and cultural history, this book will be welcomed by Chinese and East Asian historians, as well as those interested more broadly in the culture of China and East Asia.

Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times

Mapping China and Managing the World

Ann Roberts

This book helps libraries identify and implement new ways to serve their physically or mentally disabled patients. • Provides assessment tools that help libraries gauge their ability to meet the needs of disabled patrons • Includes a comprehensive index

Crash Course in Library Services to People with Disabilities

How the I Ching became one of the most widely read and influential books in the world The I Ching originated in China as a divination manual more than three thousand years ago. In 136 BCE the emperor declared it a Confucian classic, and in the centuries that followed, this work had a profound influence on the philosophy, religion, art, literature, politics, science, technology, and medicine of various cultures throughout East Asia. Jesuit missionaries brought knowledge of the I Ching to Europe in the seventeenth century, and the American counterculture embraced it in the 1960s. Here Richard Smith tells the extraordinary story of how this cryptic and once obscure book became one of the most widely read and extensively analyzed texts in all of world literature. In this concise history, Smith traces the evolution of the I Ching in China and throughout the world, explaining its complex structure, its manifold uses in different cultures, and its enduring appeal. He shows how the indigenous beliefs and customs of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Tibet "domesticated" the text, and he reflects on whether this Chinese classic can be compared to religious books such as the Bible or the Qur'an. Smith also looks at how the I Ching came to be published in dozens of languages, providing insight and inspiration to millions worldwide—including ardent admirers in the West such as Leibniz, Carl Jung, Philip K. Dick, Allen Ginsberg, Hermann Hesse, Bob Dylan, Jorge Luis Borges, and I. M. Pei. Smith offers an unparalleled biography of the most revered book in China's entire cultural tradition, and he shows us how this enigmatic ancient classic has become a truly global phenomenon.

A Biography

The I Ching

Elizabeth Ann Roberts

Ann G. Roberts

· Provides assessment tools that help libraries gauge their ability to meet the needs of disabled patrons · Includes a comprehensive index

Richard J. Smith

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