Talk:Qi
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1 Western reductionism misses one important thing |
Needles
- "which uses tiny metal spines inserted into the skin to reroute qi flow, among others."
Are the "others" other devices (and surely the usual English term is "needles"? Is needle avoided for a reason?), or effects other than rerouted chi flow? It's not very clear.
Some Chinese healer use thier fingers other than needles. It's called "Qi Neddle."
Some use their hands, esp. fingers and knuckles, for acupressure treatments. Sometimes they'll use a species of wooden dowel. See tui na. Fire Star 14:12, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Tai Chi
BF, thanks for adding Tai Chi Chuan. :-)
If you can find a Chinese calligraphy image of "Tai Chi", email it to someone here( there's a spot someplace on how to link images on Wikipedia), and it will look nice on the Tai Chi page. I keep a book beside my monitor titled "Tai Chi", by Paul Crompton. The 1st page has the Chinese symbol for Tai Chi, verified by a native of China, who pronounces it "djee". I've always been a New Age person and included Eastern thought in my lifestyle, but this book was the first one purchased that started me on my way seriously. My personal form is a ballet/ tai chi mixture which looks like me dancing slowly and breathing. It is allowed to make your own movements, as long as you know the basics. ~BF
- you can find the yin yang symbol and all the Yijing trigrams and their corresponding unicode code point in http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2600.pdf
Definining Qi
I see that several of us have worked on this definition, and none of them (including my attempt) is adequate. What we really need is simply a longer and more contentful explanation, bearing in mind that the definition shouldn't imply that ch'i actually exists (in other words, it should leave room for the possibility that ch'i very well might not exist). --LMS
Tonal information
Probably no one cares, but I believe the tonal information is very important for Chinese transliteration. Please give a reason why the information was removed. Don't tell me simply because someone don't know what it is.
FYI, according to my dictionary, there are 22 Chinese characters pronounced as qi(1), there are 42 pronounced as qi(2), 13 as qi(3) and 19 as qi(4). Removing the tonal notation at least quadrupled the ambiguity. Removing the Unicode character doesn't help at all, you are changing a precise origin of word into 96 possible mappings.
Do you want an encyclopedia with precise info or what?
- Yes, we absolutely do. I tend to agree with those who have been complaining lately that we have gotten too much into the habit of deleting content we don't like. People, that's not the right way forward. The right way forward is to edit what you don't like; if you can't be bothered to edit it, then unless there is just zero merit to it at all, you might mark the text as in need of editing, but don't delete it. Yes, there are instances where it's completely appropriate simply to delete what someone has written: if it's graffiti, if it's just entirely factually false, if it is merely (no more than) an idiosyncratic statement of opinion. But for everything (or nearly everything) else, if you're going to just delete something, at least give people a chance to defend what they wrote on the /Talk page. --LMS
Subtle energy
What is up with the "subtle energy" addition? It may be fine to provide a link to a page that talks about it, but this page (to my mind) should be about how Chinese traditions view ch'i. If syncretists want to shoehorn it into weird modern metaphors (orgone?) that is fine, but they should create their own pages, because I'll bet that there aren't many Chinese acupuncturists sitting around inside pyramids. Comments?
Fire Star 05:28, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I agree that subtle energy ought to be a separate page, linked from Qi as a See also. Apparently, it was a separate page, but the coding doesn't indicate that on the Qi page. The subtle energy link is redirected to the Qi page, so someone moved the subtle energy text to the qi page and eliminated the subtle energy page. Also, the link QI used here is about a game. This article also needs some serious copy editing. heidimo 18:33, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Heidimo. I'll give it a few more days to see if there are any additional comments or suggestions, then start editing... Fire Star 20:40, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Please merge
The following was removed from the traditional Chinese medicine article to avoid redundancy. Please merge it into this article as appropriate. heidimo 16:02, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
Qi is typically translated as "vital energy" or "life force." At the simplest level, it is the common Chinese word for "breath" or "to breathe." Therefore, Qi is said to permeate all of life. In the body, Qi pools in certain places called acupuncture points which are generally along interior pathways or channels called meridians which are similar to rivers of Qi. Qi is not considered to be a physical substance, meaning it is not visible or tangible. However, it is somehow necessary for life.
Whatever Qi is, one basic notion of Chinese medicine is that living organisms must possess it. To maintain life, Qi must circulate, and when this circulation is impeded, disease results. Many of the rudimentary treatments of Chinese medicine are to get Qi to flow, and to prevent Qi from being "blocked".
The translation of "Qi" as "energy" has caused much consternation among skeptics and Western scientists, who hold that any form of energy flowing though the body must be amenable to reductionist analysis, and that no such energy has been observed. However, neither ancient nor modern Chinese texts discuss what Qi is, but emphasize the function of Qi.
Some practitioners treat Qi as a form of electromagnetic or biological energy. Feeling for temperature differences from place to place in the body is used by practitioners for diagnostic purposes, for example. Others hold that if Qi is to be understood as energy, it is in the sense of that which is present when we say "I feel full of energy today!", not in the sense of the chemical energy of a chemical battery, or the kinetic energy of a falling rock. (When a person in Japan asks the common greeting question "O-genki desu ka?" ("How is your Qi?") the expected answer is not given in joules.)
Another idea is that Qi is best translated as "potential": where Qi is present, there are many different possible actions that an organism or system may take, while where it is absent there are few. This idea has interesting parallels with the concept of information entropy.)
None of these explanations fully describe what Qi is or what it does. Such concepts are almost impossible to disseminate in anything less than esoteric language that would make little sense to lay people, especially when worded in English.
Scientific viewpoint
I have altered the statement that "orthodox science has tested the claims of Qi...." to say something along the lines of "modern science rejects the existance of qi as pseudoscience...". I have done this because I am unaware of any honest double blind tests of Qi. There are tests of things like "laying on of hads" or "theraputic touch" famously done in the mid nineties by a child (Emily Rosa) clearly disproving their efficacy, but none of Qi specifically. --Deglr6328 06:23, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Western reductionism misses one important thing
Namely that it's stupid to restrict one's spirituality to the comprehensible or well-understood. What does it matter whether Qi exists or whether it can be explained by plain old biochemistry, when the notion of it flowing through your body gives you strength? What was that old Blaise Pascal quote?
- Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
Some things never change, obviously. Aragorn2 20:41, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Moved to talk page
Traditional Asian martial arts also discuss qi. For instance, internal systems attempt to cultivate and direct qi during combat as well as to ensure proper health. Many other martial arts include some concept of qi in their philosophies.
The above is incorrect. All systems of martial arts cultivate qi all the while developing control of yi, which translates to "intention", which is what is used to direct qi throughout the body. The difference between internal and external martial arts is that internal puts more emphasis on using qi, while external puts more emphasis on using phsycial force and strength, but both styles still cultivate qi. It is like 2 different paths leading to the same destination.
Offensively, qi can be directed into attacks such as punches, while defensively, if your opponent has caught you off guard and an attack is about to strike your body, qi will move to and gather (using yi) at the place of impact to protect the body from the blow. This concept forms the basis of styles such as FanziQuan, in which many "fake" or decoy attacks are thrown to draw the defender's qi away from where they will actually be struck.
I moved this here because, while it isn't necessarily wrong, a debate like this needs to be hashed out here, not on the article. The article should be a coherent whole, and these paragraphs have to be re-written to express that. Fire Star 03:29, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for moving it! :) I hope there are some people who can better explain what I'm trying to express.
Ah well, my bit didn't last too long. In fact, I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. Scientific analysis rather than user experience wins through, I guess. The problem is, science only sees from the outside, whilst the user experiences it. The sceptism about Qi is actually mind-boggling. Do you think this stuff has lasted so long because it's nonsense? Thousands of years.... Or are the races that use/believe in it seen as 'inferior' by Westerners? Really, there should be a non-scientific area for any subject that's inexplicable to the average scientist type. Not that scientists can't experience Qi of course. The professiorial, detailed knowledge seen here reminds me of endless classes where the professorial types stand around discussing/alaysing Qi, whereas the rest of the class gets on with learning about it. But I tried! What's interesting is that the bit about the axe, the most minor bit of a relatively long essay, still remains! Weird!241
- Greetings 241. I actually don't have a problem with what was put there as much as how it was put. The problem with personal experience is that it is anecdotal bordering on original research, and the encyclopaedic style of Wikipedia shouldn't express itself that way. I'm a T'ai Chi Ch'uan instructor for one of the largest and oldest schools in the world, and I use the term qi (although not as much as some) quite happily in my classes, and I can show it to people who ask for a demonstration. Not everyone wants to call what I am showing them "qi" however, but that's not my problem. Reproducible results, such as the medical studies reported on the T'ai Chi page, or reports of the notable, well-reported experiences of others are what will last in an article here, and the information should be presented in an npov manner, not presented as a foregone conclusion. I hope this helps. Fire Star 20:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Firestar. I would suggest that the concept behind the encyclopeaidea needs looking at. Reproducible results are not the be-all and end-all of life. Emotions, for example, can probably trigger machines to pinpoint areas of the brain, but I wouldn't say that the science of that is so advanced that they can be defined in strictly machine/science terms. But emotions are thought to exist. Art is certainly open to interpretation - paintings, etc. etc. History, politics all have various viewpoints as well. None of it reproducible, none of it machine-defined, none of it fixed as far as interpretations are concerned.
I am suggesting that other viewpoints rather than the strictly scientific one be allowed at Wiki.
Would the 'subconscious' that was first (I believe) formulated by Freud/Jung have any place here unless someone had written loads of books on it and made many (now seen as definitely dodgy) studies on it? But the subconscious was always there, it's just that no one had conceived of it. Does that mean that a load of books by people like Mantak Chia or all the others out there are necessary before the concept of Chi (accepted by however many billion people live in China, plus the Phillipines, plus India) gets more than a skeptical look in here? I have not said Qi is a foregone conclusion. I made sure to put it in terms that allow for doubt. But there ought to be room in an encyclopaedia for personal experience or different viewpoints, or it becomes a dry place based on Western sciemtifoc analysis.241
- I do believe the different aspects should be reported, but they should be reported in accord with general academic Wikipedia policy or some scientifically minded editor will simply remove them. So we have to have the wingnuts from both ends of the spectrum in the article and everything in between for completeness' sake. The good news is, that for the scientific criticism of a given phenomena we can also mention notable criticisms of the scientific method. a typical example, from the article:
- "The consensus among scientists is that the results claimed by martial arts students and patients of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners can be explained without invoking esoteric or supernatural processes and usually amount to little more than magic tricks or sleight of hand. In answer, most proponents of the effects of the cultivation of qi maintain that since modern scientific technologies have to this point been unable to create life out of organic chemicals in their laboratories, and that as qi is a metaphor for the energy of life itself, it is to be thereby demonstrated that the mechanisms of how the subject of such a metaphor would work so far elude the abilities of the scientific community to describe."
- Which has problem right away because there isn't a citation for any "consensus among scientists" so such a statement may be safely removed. However, the paragraph shows both sides of the issue, if the intro is a little weasel wordy. Cheers, Fire Star 16:01, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Odic force
I reverted the link mostly because there is a difference of degree, to my mind. Odic force is a universal concept, 氣 is a specific concept, IME, that is based on larger concepts of Taoism and Neo-confucianism, at least in conservative Chinese conceptions. The theory of Odic force, for example, doesn't seem to be specifically breath based, as 氣 is supposed to be. So, in that sense, Odic force seems to be more appropriate a link to larger Western concepts such as Neo-paganism, alchemy or astrology, but not as much (at least it seems to me) as specific concepts that posit an observable mechanism, like Four humours or Moon (astrology). Most practical theories of 氣 are based on observations of the various parameters of breathing, Odic force seems based on more larger, abstract categorizations of opposites. If it is to be linked to an Eastern article, perhaps it would be better for larger concepts such as Yin and yang or Taoism? Fire Star 00:54, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- It's the "see also" section; it doesn't have to be equivalent. "Odic force" seems to be a similar, although certainly not identical, concept. If "The Force" from Star Wars (very similar to Odic force in concept) deserves a mention in the article, Odic force at least deserves a link. It doesn't refer to breath specifically, but that's specific to the idea of qi. — Gwalla | Talk 02:09, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)