Tamba Yasuyori's works transcribed from the Chinese had a huge impact on Japanese thought, especially from the aspect of the medicine and daily food choices. One might find it interesting to know that his own take on yin/yang thinking was more in line with the New Text School, that uses the metaphysical model, rather than the physical.

This goes to show that it is possible to be an adherant of macrobiotic even though yin/yang is understood almost in the reverse way. It is like saying that black is white and vice versa. It takes a matter of getting used to and can complicate matters if one follows one set way for some time then suddenly changes orientation.

Because the physical model is more in line with modern scientific thought (brought on by more recent discoveries in the fields of astronomy, physics, and microbiology) it was the system that George Ohsawa decided upon to help in the understanding and application of the principles upon which the universe operates. Yet one would not be wrong if he/she used the New Text Metaphysical model if they so chose, as long as it is clear that the actions of the foods being consumed are known to either expand and contract once the nutrients are distributed throughout the body. The words usd to describe the actions are not so important, right? If we all call the effects of the sun "cold" even though it warms us, then what is the big deal? Semantics only. It is just important to let others know the definiition of yin/yang we are using. My Tai Chi instructor alsways says yang is black and yin is white. But he also knows that taking in air correlates with expansion and passive movements, and that exhaling air correlates with constriction and agressive (punching) movements. It seems this debate will never end, but it is good to know that there are two schools, no? (Each side wishes it was only their way!)

For the Chinese materialistLiu Zongyuan (773-819) however, the interaction of yin/yang were the sole cause of motion in Nature. Like Wang ChongLiu denounced all the false theories of theology and attacked the political administration for being so dependent on inquiries after the "Way of Heaven" while abondoning human afairs.Liu also challenged correlative cosmology -- his primary objection being that this system (Wu Xing) departed from the Tao as practiced by the sages.

But it relly wasn't until the Song Dynasty (960-1279) when we really start to see the fire again ignite over the problems with yin/yang thinking and how it was becoming more distorted and breaking away from how it was originally conceived in ancient times by Fu Xi and the Philosophical Taoists. And one again it was the RATIONAL thinkers, Ouyang Xiu (1007-1070) and Shao Yong (1011-1077) who would attempt to steer the boat back to an even keel.

According to Ouyang, the study of human affairs should be the main concern of the Confucianist scholars (who were dominant then), not cosmology. He argued further that the I Ching had over the years been reduced to cosmological issues, and that much of of the confusion over the understanding of the I Ching was largely due to the appendices writen by later authors and students from diverse sources as a way of supporting their own interpretations of the unifying principles.

In general agreement with Ouyang was Shao Yong (1011-1077) who was a Neo-COnfucianist. Shao was not satisfied at all with the King Wen Order of the I Ching hexagrams, nor any of the correlative systems that were based on the number 5.

Shao was an intense devotee of the yin/yang dialectic with an uncanny love for numbers, much like the German Liebeniz. Shao also had an immense respect for the Universal Principles upon which the I CHing was based -- the I ancient I CHing of Fu Xi that is.

Shao attempted to show that the King WEn version of the I CHing was corrupt and did not follow in line with the orignail system of yin/yang. He proved this by designating all solid lines as yang and reperesneted them as white spaces. For all broken lines that were yin he represented them as black spaces. SHao reasoned that the formation of the original 64 hexagrams evolved by marring opposing line pairs then doubling them successively through 6 stages. The resulting diagram, known as the Segregation Diagram was then formed from black spaces to the left (yin) and white spaces to the right (yang.)

The following illustration shows how this was simply created using only yin/yang thinking and dark and light colors to represent them:

Like Lao TZu's words, Shao wrote:

"When the One is divided, two is formed. Two divides to make four; FOur divides to make Eight; Eight divides to make sixteen; Sixteen to make thirty-two, and thirty-two to make sixty-four."

Like many of his predecessors (of the Old Text persuasion) Shao also found it difficult to swallow the idea of "heaven" as being the epitome of the yang principle. The rejected it entirely then replaced it with the firery energy of the SUN and called it the Greater Yang. In opposition to the SUn, Shao placed the moon and called it the Greater Yin. He then grouped the remainder of the star clusters together and called them the Lesser Yang. And finally to all the SPACES between the starrs, he gave the term the Lesser Yin. Shao was on the right track, no?

Yes, in seeing the problems caused by correlating the odd number 5 with the binary-based I Ching, Shao decided to revise the Wu Xing system to create an entirely new system based essentiall on the number four and its multiples. The number four was derived by combining the Greater and Lesser Yang (2) with the Greater and Lesser Yin (2).Shao's Four Elements were thus reduced to water, fire, soil and STONE (as opposed to earth). These four elements were then correlated to the four seasons (made from 2 solstices and 2 equinoxes -- 5 seasons do not exist in reality) and so forth.Shao eventually began to see the 64 hexagrams as symbols of a fundamental binary system od being.

Of course, all of these great thinkers really had no true way to prove any of these ideas and theories during these more ancient times but after the Polish thinker Nikolas Copernicus cames up with a cosmological model of the solar system that was sun centered and all planets revolving around it and this was later proven by mathematical examples and evidence by such luminaries as the German Johannes Kepler, Italy's Galileo, France's Rene Descartes and Britain's Sir Issac Newton, then Galeleo and Newton, then by the 1687 the old model of a universe operating under divine law had been replaced by the fundamental belief that the nature of the physical universe, once created, became subjected to physical laws rather than surperstition. These physical laws could be understood and test by the scientific method for true validation.