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Comment by gezhengwen | Hacker News Reader

I found this by accident while analyzing the I Ching with code. 81% of hexagrams are locked in one chain, none stays in its original position. You can verify it yourself in the browser. Has anyone seen this before?

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People have known about this since the Shang dynasty so yes it has been noticed before.

If you find this interesting, I suggest you study group theory - this seems pretty much a direct consequence of the group structure.

I doubt they already had the King Wen order in the Shang dynasty. Manuscripts dated to as late as the Han dynasty have a totally different hexagram order. In any case traditionally the divination book for Shang is considered to be the Guicang, not the I Ching (=Zhouyi = Changes of Zhou), which according to tradition put kun before qian.

The Shang dynasty people knew the pairing structure of hexagrams (inverted/complementary pairs), but cycle decomposition is a modern group theory tool that did not exist until the 19th century. These are two different levels of analysis.

They knew about the cycle. That's why it's called the King Wen sequence right? Not sure what part of this you think people didn't know about so we may be talking at cross purposes.

Fascinating. I've barely any knowledge of I Ching. What motivated you to explore this and I Ching in general?

The I Ching has influenced China for over 3000 years. I believe there must be a reason for that. In China, the I Ching is often treated as mysticism. But I believe in science. The end of mysticism must still be science. So I did a lot of research and found a unique pattern inside. I searched all the literature and found nothing about it. So I shared it here.

The lines of a hexagram map to the edges of a tetrahedron.

I love you. Marry me.

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