Conceptualizing ‘One’ (一): Working Towards Unity?

As a trained mathematician, I have a tendency to work on numbers in history in either abstract or in numerical terms.Such an approach is not easy to connect to for a sinological audience.One way to make a connection is to go beyond elementary arithmetic and look at the intellectual and cultural charge of numbers.Similar to many languages in the world, numbers display a variety of meanings in Chinese and other East Asian languages that borrowed the characters associated with them from Han China.An early attempt to discuss numbers and their connection to the world order as perceived in Ancient China was made by Marcel Granet in 1934.He studied numbers as emblems, the polyvalent opportunities they present to manipulate their symbolic value.As Marcel Granet (1934) puts it: 1 L'ide de quantit ne joue autant dire aucun rle dans les spculations philosophiques des Chinois.Les Nombres, cependant, intressent passionnment les Sages de l'ancienne Chine.Mais nul Sage n'a accept de les utiliser, si ce n'est dans la mesure o, ce savoir facilitait des jeux numriques. A ct d'une valeur quantitative qui les distingue, mais qu'on tend ngliger, les Nombres possdent une valeur symbolique beaucoup plus intressante.Ce sont des emblmes.On leur attribue tout d'abord un vritable pouvoir descriptive.[The idea of quantity plays virtually no role in Chinese philosophical speculation.Numbers, however, were of great interest to the wise men of ancient China.But no wise man agreed to use them, except insofar as this knowledge facilitated numerical games. Next to a distinctive quantitative meaning, which we tend to neglect, numbers have much more interesting symbolic value.They are emblems to which first and foremost a veritable descriptive power is attributed.