170 1 year, the German mathematician Leibniz wrote a letter to his good friend Father Bai Jin in Beijing, telling him that he invented the binary system. Bai Jin was very interested in this and found that binary system was very similar to a symbol system in ancient China. This symbol system consists of a long line and two short lines, which are-and-,that is, Yang and Yin when people interpret Zhouyi.
It is speculated that Zhouyi was written more than 3,000 years ago, and it was mainly used for divination. The two symbols in the book may represent "yes" and "no" respectively. According to legend, the Book of Changes was first painted with eight basic hexagrams by Fuxi, then superimposed into sixty-four hexagrams by Zhou Wenwang, eulogized by the Duke of Zhou (a rhetoric to explain the meaning), and finally revised into a book by Confucius.
In the long history, Zhouyi has gradually been regarded as a book of wisdom, which contains the thoughts of Yin and Yang, indicating that Yin and Yang divination has been combined into different forms, so people can make various explanations and explanations on the changes of nature and human life.
Some people think that if the masculine gender of gossip is regarded as 1 and the feminine gender as 0, it becomes binary. Take Gankun, a symbol of heaven and earth, as an example. Gankun hexagram consists of three Yang hexagrams, namely binary 1 1 1, corresponding to decimal 7; Kungua consists of three yin hexagrams, namely binary 000, corresponding to decimal 0. So some people think that gossip is the earliest binary invented by China people. Is that really the case?
Summary: It is said that Leibniz was very surprised by the similarity between binary system and hexagrams in Zhouyi. He is also convinced of the mathematical significance of Zhouyi, and thinks that the gossip in Zhouyi can be explained by binary. However, just because the divination composed of yin and yang coincides with binary, it cannot be said that binary originated from Zhouyi.
In fact, Leibniz didn't invent binary until he saw Zhouyi. When he invented the binary system, he also designed a machine that can complete the calculation of binary numbers.
It can be said that the use of binary for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and the conversion with other binary systems are also not available in the Eight Diagrams of Zhouyi. Therefore, objectively speaking, the coincidence of hexagrams and binary in Zhouyi may provide some inspiration to mathematicians. The ancient wisdom of China represented by Zhouyi does have some similarities with modern philosophy of science, but it is not necessarily reflected in the binary system.