Final project
The capstone — critically evaluate a modern popular claim about this course's sign system, then transfer the same toolkit to one it never covered
Due: 28 May 2027 · Weight: 60%
The brief#
Critically evaluate one modern popular claim about Taiji, Bagua, or the Yijing, then apply this course’s toolkit to a sign system the course never covered.
Two parts, one skill: the first half tests whether you can trace a popular claim back to what is actually documented; the second tests whether that same sourcing and analytical discipline transfers to something genuinely new to you.
What you submit#
A written evaluation (claim, sourcing trail, evidence-register label per claim, verdict) of the popular claim you chose, followed by a construction-and-analysis of an unfamiliar sign system using this course’s toolkit — enough for a reader with no other context to follow both parts without you there to explain them.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- submitted by the deadline, in the format named below
- the critical evaluation cites primary or academic sources, not tertiary wikis, for every factual claim it relies on
- the critical evaluation labels at least three specific claims it discusses as historically attested fact, traditional/legendary attribution, or later interpretation/modern analogy, using this course's three evidence registers
- the transfer analysis names which parts of this course's toolkit it is applying, and where the unfamiliar system's structure differs
How it is marked
Judged as a whole against the brief, with particular attention to whether the critical evaluation is sourced rather than asserted, whether at least three specific claims are correctly labelled by evidence register (fact, attribution, or interpretation) rather than left unmarked, and whether the transfer analysis genuinely applies this course's toolkit (construction rules, structural relationships, arrangement, fact-versus-interpretation discipline) rather than restating facts about the new system in isolation.