Shao Yong

Shao Yong ( Kangjie Shao ( Shao Kang Chieh [ Jie ])), also Shao Yung (* 1011, † 1077 ) was a Chinese philosopher, poet, cosmologist and historian of the Song Dynasty. He has greatly influenced the development of Neo- Confucianism in China.

Shao was one of the most learned men of his time. On the basis of the Yi Jing ( Book of Changes ) and the Yin - Yang Shao Yung school developed a fantastic system of symbolism and an extremely speculative cosmology. He avoided his whole life to accept a government positions. Nevertheless, his influence was hardly less great. Shao's influential treatise is the Huang- chi ching- shi shuh ( Huangji Jingshi ,皇 极 经 世, Book of the top world order principles ).

His arrangement of the eight trigrams and hexagrams in the I Ching 64 is known as Xian Tian ( Former Heaven) and impressed six centuries later, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for the development of binary arithmetic operations.