Talk:Five Elements
From Academic Kids
As I recall, there are five flavors to Chinese cooking (not to be confused with Five spices powder)... is there a connection? --NickelKnowledge
- The five flavors to Chinese cooking are sour, sweet, bitter, hot (as in chilly pepper), salty. Don't know if they tie to the five elements though.
- These five flavors are not in any way restricted to Chinese cooking, but are universal and tied more to the human tongue! There is also the 'rich' element which is the fullness of flavor added by fats (due to their round molecules). Indian cooking relies on chutneys and sauces that combine pairs of the flavors, and French cooking uses a particular obvious mapping: pepper is bitter and hot, salt is salty, sugar is sweet, vinegar or lemon is sour, and raw salad greens tend to be bitters as well. These three (Chinese, Indian, French) are considered the three great cooking traditions, and others (Italian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, etc.) considered derivative in general.
-- Probably not. Chinese like to number things (like the Jiang Zemin's theory of the three representations or Deng Xiaoping's four cardinal principles).
Or the six flavors of quarks?
- I don't know about quarks, but I would guess the five flavors are related. I think that the five animals in Five Animals Kung Fu would probably represent the five elements as well? (tiger, leopard, crane, snake, dragon) I know that this five elements theory is also important in Japanese Shiatsu. And I think the belief in them predates the Taoist theory of Yin and Yang, if that's worth mentioning. --Wesley
- Even when we know now the electrons, not the positive charge flow in the circuit, the definition of electric current is not abandoned because the model still works despite the invalid underlying theory.
This is a misrepresentation of the theory of electromagnetism. The definition of electric current is in no way invalidated by the fact that electrons are negatively charged. The definition is J=dρ/dt, and this definition gives no special place to either positive or negative charge.
I'm changing it to an example that hardly anyone will understand, but at least it's factually accurate. -- Tim Starling
This is incomprehensible. The statement that a scientific model does not have to be valid to be useful makes no sense.
- At first sight, the theory behind the five elements seems to be very unscientific. However, if one thinks of it as a model and scaffolding to build knowledge on, one may find the system intriguing. Even the western scientific model does not have to be valid to be useful. One example is classical electrodynamics - even though it suffers fundamental problems such as infinite field energy and acausal acceleration, it is still widely used. By the same token, the five elements system is a useful model regardless how unscientific it may seem to be
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I just fixed a pet peeve of mine. Chinese philosophy includes a lot of things from Daoism to Maoism. The five elements is important on Chinese philosophies which are connected to Daoism, but its not an important concept in say Chinese Marxism, Zen Buddhism, or the Confucian Evidental school.
Also, removed the statement that five elements is an important and deep part of Chinese culture. Chinese culture is much too diverse to make a sweeping statement like that.
- agreed - it is no more important than the w:Greek four elements (earth, air, fire water) is in our present day scientific culture.
I removed the following because the second sentence contradicts acupuncture and the first just seems out of place and meaninglessly vague. Tuf-Kat
- Herbal therapy works wonders for certain types of diseases, and is widely used in China. Acupuncture was proven effective in suppressing certain types of symptoms even though medical equipment fails to show how qi flows in the meridian of the body.
What about five directions (North, S, W, E and center)? Did Taoists make any correlation? -- Error
- Yes, at least among Korean Daoists, who also assigned the seasons to different elements. Wood = East and spring; Fire = South and summer; Earth = Centre and ? ("toyong", which literally means "earth use", but I don't have my Korean dictionary in front of me to figure out the meaning); Metal = West and autumn; Water = North and winter. I could add these to the main page, but wouldn't a table be nice? Well, unless someone either vociferously objects or does it first, I'll add a table some time soon... Sewing 22:31, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)
There appears to have been cultural transmission between Egypt and China at a very early time, because the sequence given immediately above, which first occurs in the Bo Hu Tong, is the reverse of the sequence of the five visible planets used to name the five days of the week exclusive of Sunday and Monday. (added by Patrick0Moran)
- I think this statement is just jump to conclusion. When people from different culture observed the same celestral pattern, it does not implied a cultural transmission. Almost all cultures around the world observes the pattern of seasons, the relative position of the sun, number of lunar cycles before the seasons repeat etc. All culture knows there are 12 months per year, following the same logic, all culture on earth had cultural transmission. Kowloonese 01:39, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Of course, prior to discovery of any further evidence, it is just a hypothesis, but a hypothesis that may be very productive. If it were simply that both cultures had a list of planets that went by their apparent speed along the zodiac, then it would be absurd to insist that one had learned the list from the other. Even though some early shepherd several thousands of years ago might have noticed the fact and communicated it to the original nuclear band of humans somewhere in Africa, and that information might have remained the common property of most members of the human diaspora, that would not preclude some group having forgotten that piece of lore and then some member of that groups rediscovering the fact at some later time. Anyway, there is absolutely nothing surprising about the list: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.
On the other hand, what are the chances that somebody would randomly come up with the list Jin, Mu, Shui, Huo, Tu and that it would be the same list as somebody else's list Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus? You can use the laws of probability to come up with the betting odds. Let's simplify a little bit by saying that it really doesn't matter whether you write it in the Chinese order or the Western order. What are the chances that the two lists will start with the same planet, Saturn? That's one in 5. What are the chances that the next planet name chosen at random will be Mars? There are 4 other possibilities, so it is 1/4. What of the next choice? There are 3 possibilities, so that probability is 1/3. The next time the probability will be 1/2. So the total probability of getting exactly the same line-up would be 1/120.
Then you look at the question of how the Western list was ordered, and you find that there was a simple rule for it. You look at the Chinese list and you find that a version of the Western rule, modified to fit Chinese time concepts, will produce exactly the correct order -- including the fact that it is the reverse of the Western order. It doesn't prove anything, but it certainly makes me inclined to look into old texts and legends for any information that might throw further light on this subject. For one thing, both cultures seem to have had the idea that since the sun has a definite influence on biological processes on the earth, and since the moon has a discoverable influence on biological processes on earth (and there are specific phenomena mentioned in early texts), then the other moving things in the sky may have an influence on earthly things. P0M 02:22, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)
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Please merge
The following was removed from the traditional Chinese medicine article in order to reduce redundancy. If any of it needs to be added here, please merge it. heidimo 16:07, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
The Five Elements theory (五行 wǔ xíng), sometimes translated "Five Movements" or "Five Transformations," is also a fundamental concept in TCM theory.
The Five Elements of TCM are:
- Wood
- Fire
- Earth
- Water
- Metal
Like Yin and Yang, these are not energies or substances, but basic qualities or phases of a cycle that can be found in natural phenomena, including the human being. Different schools of thought within TCM have had differing opinions on the importance of Five Element theory; it is primary to one particular school of thought within TCM appropriately called Five Element Acupuncture, while others make little direct reference to it.
Here the Five Element are refered to as a taoist concept. I'm not sure I could fully agree. It's part of Chinese thought and shared among many different schools. gbog 13:45, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
You are quite correct. See Fung Yu-lang, A History of Chinese Philosophy for details. P0M
Did some editing
I considered it somewhat inappropriate that this page and Zang Fu theory were linking to Western medicine entries about organs, and have threfore created corresponding (Zang) and (Fu) stubs, linked to those where I considered it appropriate and moved some content from Pericardium to Pericardium (Zang), putting in some appropriate linking text instead.
Also deleted 'hair' from the list corresponding to the Metal element, since the body hair is Metal and the head hair is Water (Maciocia, The Foundations of Chinese Medicine) - leaving it there could create potential for confusion. User:NickArgall
Jr'u-chue
"Jr'u-chue". Is that a typo? I've never seen this kind of spelling.--Euniana 20:29, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- Looked up the character and most sources give it as "Zhu". Someone with more Chinese knowledge, please correct me if necessary. DenisMoskowitz 18:27, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)
Order of the five elements
In China, these five elements are commonly known as
metal, wood, water, fire, and earth (金, 木, 水, 火, 土; jīn, mù, shǔi, huǒ, tǔ)
instead of
wood, fire, earth, metal, and water (木, 火, 土, 金, 水; mù, huǒ, tǔ, jīn, shǔi)
.
- Above was by User:220.249.34.14
- That's neither the "generating order" nor the "controlling order". Do you have some documentation for this claim? DenisMoskowitz 18:47, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)
- Let me answer my own question - google agrees with you. Compare [1] (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E9%87%91+%E6%9C%A8+%E6%B0%B4+%E7%81%AB+%E5%9C%9F%22) (26,000 hits) with [2] (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E6%9C%A8+%E7%81%AB+%E5%9C%9F+%E9%87%91+%E6%B0%B4%22) (10,000 hits). I'm not sure that makes it worth rearranging the article though. DenisMoskowitz 19:22, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)
