Week 10 Session: One Symbol, Two Histories — Zhou Dunyi's Taijitu and the Swirling Symbol

How did a change in visual form change how the idea was communicated?

26 April 2027

The question

“Taijitu” names more than one image. What actually changed between them, and what did that change do to how the underlying idea was read?

What this builds on

Week 2 deliberately withheld any taijitu image while introducing Taiji itself. This week is where that image finally arrives — as two images, not one — continuing the second half’s pattern of meaning building up in layers on top of an established structure.

Two diagrams, two different things to notice

Zhou Dunyi’s Taijitu shuo (太極圖說, 1017–1073) — as transmitted through Zhu Xi’s 12th-century commentary, since no autograph diagram survives — describes a five-tier diagram, in order: Wuji-er-Taiji (無極而太極, “Non-Polar, and yet Supreme Polarity”) as one combined tier → yang activity and yin stillness (陽動陰靜), the yin-yang polarity tier → the Five Phases (水火木金土, Water, Fire, Wood, Metal, Earth) → Qian becomes the male, Kun becomes the female (乾道成男 / 坤道成女) → the transformation and generation of the myriad things (萬物化生). Read top to bottom, the diagram is an argument: each tier is a distinct, discrete stage that the one above generates, and the stages are meant to be told apart.

The familiar swirling black-and-white symbol is a separate, later image, with documented diffusion from the Ming dynasty onward — not an update to Zhou Dunyi’s diagram, but a different object entirely. Put the two side by side and the difference isn’t cosmetic: a diagram of five discrete, labelled tiers makes stages and their generative order easy to see and a continuous whole hard to picture; a single swirling division of black and white makes continuous, interlocking wholeness the first thing you notice, at the cost of any of Zhou Dunyi’s five stages being visible at all. Two readers who each know only one of these images would describe “the Taiji symbol” in almost opposite terms — not because either is wrong about the picture in front of them, but because a redesigned visual form changes what a sign makes easy to see and what it makes disappear.

Zhou Dunyi's transmitted Taijitu

11th century, as transmitted through Zhu Xi's 12th-century commentary — vertically staged, five discrete tiers.

  1. 無極而太極Wuji-er-Taiji — "Non-Polar, and yet Supreme Polarity": one combined first tier, not two.
  2. 陽動陰靜Yang in activity, yin in stillness — a static two-part division, not the later swirl.
  3. 水火木金土The Five Phases — Water, Fire, Wood, Metal, Earth — break the circle pattern here.
  4. 乾道成男 / 坤道成女The Way of Qian becomes the male, the Way of Kun becomes the female.
  5. 萬物化生The transformation and generation of the myriad things.

The later swirling taijitu

Ming dynasty and after — a single continuous circular image, a different historical object, not a redrawing of Zhou Dunyi's diagram.

  1. ☰ Qian
  2. ☱ Dui
  3. ☲ Li
  4. ☳ Zhen
  5. ☷ Kun
  6. ☶ Gen
  7. ☵ Kan
  8. ☴ Xun

Surrounding trigrams: the Xiantian arrangement (week 6) — the one Ming-era sources actually pair the swirl with, not an arrangement chosen for this figure.

Same name, two different objects: Zhou Dunyi's diagram is read stage by stage; the later swirl is read as one continuous whole. Neither is a redrawing of the other.
Claimed origin, surviving evidence, and later diffusion are three different questions — this timeline keeps them separate rather than collapsing them into one confirmed date.
  1. Historical context1017–1073Zhou Dunyi's lifetime, author of the Taijitu shuo. No autograph diagram survives.
  2. Transmitted / redacted form12th centuryZhu Xi's commentary transmits the five-tier diagram this course teaches — the form that survives, not Zhou Dunyi's own hand.
  3. Textual claim1378 / 1380Zhao Huiqian's Liushu benyi is prefaced, combining the swirl motif with the xiantian trigram circle — the earliest textual claim for that combination.
  4. Checked — absent1415 / 1444–1445The combined design is explicitly absent from both the Xingli daquan (1415) and the Ming Daoist Canon (1444/1445) — a real evidentiary gap, not an oversight.
  5. Surviving print evidence1517 / 1520Earliest surviving printed editions of the Liushu benyi that actually carry the combined design.
  6. Later reception / diffusionMing–Qing onwardContinued circulation through the Ming and Qing, reaching global popular culture as "the yin-yang symbol" only much later.

What you should be able to do after this week

Distinguish Zhou Dunyi’s five-tier diagram from the later swirling symbol as two separate images, name the five tiers in order, and state what the redesign made visible or invisible rather than describing it as the same idea in new clothing. Next week follows one specific afterlife this notation had outside China entirely — and a popular story about it that overstates what is actually documented.

The spec

What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

Teaching team