I Ching

If oracle bones represented the earliest form of writing in Chinese civilization, the first book or ideological system was the I Ching -易经, (also Zhou Yi - 周易), usually translated as the Book of Changes, a system devoted to foresee the future.

The I Ching is sometimes considered as the Fifth Confucian Classic, as it was compiled by Confucius. He indeed edited most of the written production before him. The I Ching has not only influenced Confucian and especially Neo-Confucian thinking but is also deeply rooted in the Daoist and the Yin-Yang theories.

The book, as it is received, consists of two parts, the classic and a series of comments. The classic (the actual I Ching) was originally a divination book with a divination method by which 64 signs or symbols (gua 卦) are generated and interpreted.

In my opinion, while the West has relied on mathematics to calculate, and as a result of it science has been developed, Chinese focused in foreseeing basically other people intentions, which, if actually unpredictable, Chinese considered convenient to analyze a number of possibilities or hypothesis in advance to identify easier and faster the one which actually turns up.