Talk:Qi/Archive 1

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: Subtle Energy. Same thing as Qi, another way to vaguely discuss the same thing. No reason for it to not be included. It's basically an synonym westerners can wrap our brains around. thanks all, DS 72.72.47.78 14:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Subtle energy

message: 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)
thread_title: Please merge

message: 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)
replies: text: Nice. In fact, if you train with a Chinese qigong master for a while, you can experience this yourself, and have a BASIS FOR YOUR OPINION, rather than posting misinformation, essentially just repeated from some antiquated conservative, skeptical, not-knowing source. Thanks, DS72.72.47.78 14:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Western reductionism misses one important thing 

message: I read the article. Didn't understand a couple points. Googled. I'm now going to add a few quotes that helped me. Please don't delete them just cause they aren't helpful to you experts who already get it. Move to a main section. Add context. Whatever. But quotes are better than a rewrite for purposes of documented reliability and verifyability, not to mention greater proof against editorial creep from numerous small changes over time. 4.250.27.24 02:39, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought I'd expand a little for anyone who thinks, "We said that already!" Sometimes hearing a thing said a different way makes clear something an expert wouldn't have questioned in the first place. I read qi was breath and in "everything". I took that to mean "everything (living)" with living being provided by the context. In the definition I quote it is clear that I misunderstood and it really is everything (living, dead, photons, everything). Then again maybe I'm still getting it wrong. Also I read about the romanization and I figure that's all in the past. Another quote shows me there are many current other English spellings for qi. And so on. 4.250.27.24 03:15, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New to "qi"

message: I have now gone through the whole talk page and added formatting to increase readability. I may have made some mistakes, for which I apologize and hope whoever is affected will correct it. Let's try to be more careful with formatting and let's remember to add signatures (four tildes). Thanks. -- Fyslee 11:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Formatting

message: I've added quite a bit on the use of qi in martial arts. I've tried to keep it as neutral as posible. 
For what its worth I've seen the action from a distance stunt. And yes the master did make the student fall over. How I do not know (well not in any way. 
As for refences, the books are added are really references to backup statments in the article rather than sugestions for further reading. Not a big deal. The Columbia University reference is really very poor, only a few paragraphs on the subject, no link to other material, there has to be way better references to this. It might be worth investigating the bibliography of the MSc dissertation I just added, there are a number of interesting papers mentioned there. --Salix alba (talk) 01:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Martial Arts 

message: Wikipedia policies and guidelines
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I've just reverted the new section on Qi and APT. For includion in an established article there are several conditions which must be met as indicated by the box on the right. In addition it should link to appropriate term, what is APT refering to.
I've no particular exception to a section on qi and APT if Wikipedia:Reliable sources can be found and it is properly linked and formatted. It might be best if just a short paragraph on the subject is included. --Salix alba (talk) 07:18, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  APT 

message: Near the beginning the text says:
One of the important early figures in Chinese mythology is Huang Di or the Yellow Emperor. He is often considered a culture hero who collected and formalized much of what subsequently became known as traditional Chinese medicine. Although the concept of qi has been very important within all Chinese philosophies, their descriptions of qi have been varied and conflicting.
The intent of the author of this passage would seem to be to allege some connection between Huang Di and qi. But the text doesn't actually say that, so I can't say that the text is wrong. 
If it was the intent of the author to allege a connection, then I have to object that "Huang Di" is a mythical character who first appears in written records far later than the extant texts that do make use of the concept of qi. The earliest mention I have found so far is in the Lù shì chūn-qīu, the author of which died in 235 B.C., i.e., after the end of the Zhou dynasty.
We should not begin an article by grounding it in the authority of a myth.P0M 03:56, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Point one

message: The article states:
The etymological meaning of the qi ideogram in its traditional form 氣 is “steam (气) rising from rice (米) as it cooks”.
That statement does not jibe with current research (i.e., research done after the oracle bones were discovered).  Originally, the character 气 depicted vapor, steam, etc., and 氣 meant prepared foodstuffs offered to other people. Then for whatever reason people started to write the second character in place of the first character -- perhaps because the handwritten form was easy to write so it might be misinterpreted, perhaps because calligraphers thought the second character looked better. But the result was that when somebody really wanted to talk about the foodstuffs being offered they risked getting people mixed so. So a third character was invented to use in place of the original meaning of the second character: 餼.  That's not the only time something like that has happened, by the way.  (See 高樹藩, 形音義宗合大字典, p. 804.) P0M 04:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Point two

message: 'Qi' is in the UK dictionary, but not the US. It is a commonly-used word in UK Scrabble, as it uses a Q without a U.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by MartinUK (talk • contribs) 12:05, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible Trivia

message: I've removed a bunch of stuff where somebody went off the deep end interpreting the phoneme "ki" as having deeper significance than it does in Japanese.  It's just a word root that has different connotations depending on context, but usually related to feeling or energy.  To tease out the root meanings and call it a literal meaning is something of a stretch.  The Crow 02:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Japanese 

message: Ther old section was a combination of several different versions and was mostly unsourced anecdote. To make things worse, there was a bit earlier in the article which also mentioned martial applications of the principle. I realise that I've pared it back somewhat drastically, but the links to Chinese martial arts and Japanese martial arts should allow people to follow up effectively without making this article overly tendentious {or mercenary). --Fire Star 火星 21:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Martial arts 

message: I just removed one commercial link. There appear to be lots of others, and it would be good to click through the list and remove any links to sites that promote businesses.  P0M 06:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spam 

message: I've started to put the fundamental references to qi in Chinese philosophical writings on the following sites:
1. 
2. 
3. 
I think that when it is all available it will make it easier for everyone to improve the Wikipedia article. P0M 06:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  fundamental sources 

message: I've deleted the following passage:
By contrast to some earlier thinkers, the Neo-Confucians criticized the notion that qi exists as something distinct from matter, and viewed qi as arising from the properties of matter.  Most of the theories of qi as a metaphor for the fundamental physical properties of the universe that we are familiar with today were systematized and promulgated in the last thousand years or so by the Neo-Confucians. Knowledge of the theories they espoused was eventually required by subsequent Chinese dynasties to pass their civil service examinations.
There are lots of Neo-Confucians, so there might be some basis for the above statement. However, anything that speaks of "matter" at this early time in Chinese history is anachronistic.  The issue that the Neo-Confucians talked about a lot was, "What is the relationship between 理 li, and 氣 qi, and that (dragged by force into Western terminology) is a contrast between form and substance.  If this article were to get into the technicalities of Neo-Confucian thought, then it would try to answer the question, "What did the Neo-Confucians claim the relationship between li and qi to be? Were they mutually aspective, did one create the other, or were they ab initio two separate orders of existence in the Universe that were brought together by some (unspecified) third factor?"  The people who devote themselves professionally to the history of Chines philosophy have not been able to settle the argument of whether Zhu Xi was a monist or a dualist, so it would be difficult to discuss the matter in any article limited to 32k.  The best we could do would be to find some quotations that clearly state the dilemma that the Song dynasty thinkers faced.  P0M 21:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: And a deletion

message: The text asserts that "a traditional Neo-Confucian explanation of the principle is given in most martial art schools." There are two huge problems with that assertion:
*Most people who teach in martial arts schools have done no direct research into Neo-Confucian texts, and secondary texts will not provide them with a treatment of the "traditional Neo-Confucian explanation."  The main reason that the secondary texts don't do that is due to the need to keep their explanations relatively short, and to the following consideration.
*Neo-Confucian scholars such as Zhu Xi take the idea of qi as a given. Furthermore, when they have anything to say about it they try to ground everything in the ancient texts, texts that are not necessarily even Confucian. In fact, as the materials added at the top of the article show, the "metaphysical" treatments of qi tend to be found in the Daoist texts. 
The effort of the Neo-Confucians is, in general, a synthetic one. They are trying to bring together challenging non-Confucian ideas that challenge Confucianism since those ideas provide explanations for things that traditional Confucianism does not talk about and combine them with fundamental ideas from Confucius and Mencius in such a way that they can explain new things without denying the validity of what the masters of their school had to say.  Anything new that they had to say about qi lay in their development of the concept of 氣質 qi zhi or "materialized qi" and their use of this new concept to explain how people could have the fundamentally good nature ascribed to all human beings by Mencius and yet be born with stubborn tendencies to do anti-social things.  I have been in lots of martial arts classes taught by very good people, and I've never heard any discussion of qi that went beyond the experiential. For instance, I recall clearly one teacher explaining why a particular wrist grip could unobtrusively rob one's opponent of enough of his power to give one a tactical advantage. "It cuts off the flow of qi," was all the explanation that was needed or given.
So can anybody explain where this idea of the Neo-Confucian traditional explanation of qi comes from? Give me a citation if possible. In all the books I have on the martial arts the only place where Neo-Confucianism is mentioned are those regarding the indoctrination that samurai were subjected to in Japan.  P0M 19:18, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neo-Confucianism? 

message: The current text has "Theories of traditional Chinese medicine assert that the body has natural patterns of qi that circulate in channels called meridians in English." That idea seems to be a commonplace among Western thinkers who are interested in acupuncture, but the idea does not seem to come up in Manfred Porkert's vast attempt to translate acupuncture ideas into English, nor can I find it in my Chinese acupuncture text. So I am wondering whether this is an idea that has come about because of mistranslation or misunderstanding of something that has another explanation.  It would be very helpful if the authors would supply citations that go beyond popularization in English. P0M 19:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Really needs citations 

message: The notice at the top of the article, claiming it lacks adequate references, has been there for quite a while now.  Are there still claims for which references are actually needed? Did whoever put that notice up get specific or just do the usual thing and complain in a general way? P0M 02:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If there are no longer any complaints about paucity of references, why not remove that notice? P0M 22:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wolf ticket on references