Bréard A (2025)
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2025
Publisher: Springer
Edited Volumes: Mathematics and Astronomy in the Ancient World. An East-Asian Perspective
City/Town: Cham
Pages Range: 21-42
ISBN: 9783031938085
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-93809-2_2
In the absence of contemporary literary sources providing context to numerical inscriptions on ancient Chinese artifacts (twelfth to fourth century bce), this chapter proposes a statistical approach. It allows to make some hypothesis about possible practices in which sequences of numbers (ranging from 4 or 5 to 8 or 9) devoid of explanations might have emerged. Structural similarities to sets of three or six numbers in later trigram and hexagram divination techniques as described in the Book of Changes (Yijing 易經), as well as archaeological finds of dice of six, fourteen, and eighteen sides in relation to divinatory practices, are taken into consideration in this new approach. Several theoretical models are proposed and tested against the relative frequencies of numbers as they appear on ancient artifacts and in manuscripts. Future archaeological finds of more inscriptions of numerical sequences will allow to support or refute the conclusions drawn here, in particular (1) the result that before canonization of the Dayan procedure described in a commentary to the Yijing, a variety of similar practices for counting off was in circulation much earlier than expected, and (2) that certain techniques involving dice might have played a role in producing the observed numerical sequences.
APA:
Bréard, A. (2025). A Statistical Approach to Numerical Sequences on Ancient Chinese Artifacts. In Daniel Patrick Morgan, Tang Quan (Eds.), Mathematics and Astronomy in the Ancient World. An East-Asian Perspective. (pp. 21-42). Cham: Springer.
MLA:
Bréard, Andrea. "A Statistical Approach to Numerical Sequences on Ancient Chinese Artifacts." Mathematics and Astronomy in the Ancient World. An East-Asian Perspective. Ed. Daniel Patrick Morgan, Tang Quan, Cham: Springer, 2025. 21-42.
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