Talk:Qi

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[edit] Possible Trivia

'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.

[edit] Archived talk

[edit] Pronunciation?

I've always known the word to be pronouned 'chee'. Is this correct, or is the word mispronounced because of the common 'ch' spelling? The other spellings make it look as though it would be pronounced 'kee'. Could someone in the know add a pronunciation to this article?--Jcvamp 05:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The Mandarin pronunciation of the word is indeed "chee" with a kind of clipped quality, the "falling" fourth tone of Mandarin. In Japanese, it is ki or "kee" without any tonal consideration. In other dialects and languages it varies considerably. The pinyin romanisation "qi", despite becoming more common, is not a satisfactory spelling in any event. --Fire Star 火星 00:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh okay. In terms of transliteration, I've always known 'q' to be pronounced 'k', which is why I asked. Shouldn't this article be renamed to reflect the more common 'ch' spelling?--Jcvamp 22:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
No, it shouldn't. There should be a better pronunciation guide for those, like yourself, who know nothing about Pinyin. No offense intended - Pinyin is better than Wade-Giles ("Peking," "Tai Ch'i Chuan") but only at the cost of ease-of-use for many speakers of Western languages ("Beijing," "Taiji Chuan"). In Mandarin, the phoneme represented in English by "qi" is, as Fire Star correctly told you, pronounced like "chee" as in "cheese," only with a bit of a clipped quality to the initial sound. I've forgotten my descriptive phonology, but suffice it to say that if you start with a heavy shhhhhh! sound, open your lips a bit more, then head in the direction of Cheese, but keep it a very short sound, you're quite close. Compare to the difficulty of teaching an American how to pronounce "xiao" or "xie xie" or "Xing-Yi" (Hsing-I). In other words, your question is good, the answer is "no, but we should add to the entry."Eh Nonymous 10:39, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. At least my question could initiate a change for the better in the article.--Jcvamp 02:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The reason that the word is spelled "qi" in Pinyin romanization is that it was judged desirable to use different symbols for different sounds, and the sounds that we English speakers misinterpret as the same as the "ch" in "cheese" are actually two different ones. The English "ch" (for most but not all speakers) is made by placing the tip of the tongue on the "corner" of the hard ridge behind the upper front teeth. The Chinese "qi" sound is made by placing the tip of the tongue down behind the lower front teeth and making the tongue bell up so that the flat part of the tongue a half inch or so beyond the tip touches the aforementioned hard ridge area. On the other hand the "ch" sound that is represented by "ch" in Pinyin romanization is made with the tip of the tongue curled back in the mouth to a place close to the back hend of hard ridge that runs from front to back along the top of your mouth. (It took me a whole year in Taiwan to figure out the ji, qi, and xi sounds--all made in the same part of the mouth--and I could never hear the difference until a teacher happened to recite the alphabet as "a, b, xi, d, e, f, ji..." Suddenly the xi, and ji sounds stood out as the wrong sound--not for Chinese but for the English alphabet.)

All that being said, I'm not sure that we should have anything in the article other than a link to the pronunciation of Chinese sounds. When speakers with a prominent New Jersey accent speak English to the rest of us we notice the difference but we are not greatly impeded in our understanding of what they say. It hsppens that they are making their "gee," "chee," etc. sounds the way Chinese make theirs. So if Americans from other parts of the country can deal with the minor differences without great inconvenience, then Chinese people can probably tolerate a small variance in the opposite direction coming from most speakers of American English.

What is annoying to me is the mispronunciation of Beijing as "bay zhzhzhing." I don't know who learned the wrong way during Nixon's trip to China, but the incorrect speech sound seems to have propagated from that time. Maybe it was King Richard himself who got it wrong. Who would have dared to correct him? P0M 05:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In Japanese

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)


[edit] In the FarEast

1. This concept may have been put forth initially as an explanation for the unexplainable in a time of limited scientific knowledge, but its practical use today is almost entirely related to physical exertion (especially martial arts) and traditional medicine. 2. In the martial arts, which are a form of exercise more than practical self-defense for most people today, the master instructs students to a. breathe fully and rhythmically b. be alert but not tense (not relaxed, although the breathing gives that impression) c. and to draw in energy from the air and all one's surroundings into oneself then redirect it through whatever physical motion you undertake (and not just for offensive or redirecting moves, but also for things like bracing for a strike to be inflicted upon oneself). a and b are familiar concepts to most serious athletes, and c is a good mental technique for heightening focus and environment (which includes opponents) awareness. Put all of them together and you have a pretty good mental approach to precision in both movement and generated energy (or force).

[edit] Characters in article

Does anyone else find the characters used as illustrative in the infobox to be confusing and inelegant? The "antique version" (I've seen original inscriptions of the "modern" character that date from ca. 500 BC) is unexplained and (to my mind) illegible, and I can read Chinese. --Fire Star 火星 03:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, the style of the writing is much too fancy graphic design. It took a while to convice myself that he modern one was correct. I can't comment on the antique one. I just reduced the size as they were much to big in the version when they were introduced.[1] --Salix alba (talk) 08:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
The "antique version" is just totally wrong. I can't even figure out how it would look if it were written out with a Chinese writing brush. It might be an attempt to represent some Daoist talismanic form or something (maybe it's supposed to be 炁?), but it has nothing to do with the way the Oracle Bone forms look. I can scan or otherwise reproduce a true Oracle Bone form. The explanation of the traditional character is wrong too. The present simplified form is actually the slightly stylized form of the original Oracle Bone form. The traditional form was originally used to refer to a kind of presentation of food to guests and diagrammed the qi or vapor rising from newly cooked rice that was so offered. That is why there is a 米 in there. Later on I suppose the rather sketchy original form of 氣 which is what you have left after removing the rice, was getting misread unless it was very carefully written so people started to use the more complicated character. Then when that happened they still needed a word for the guest-feeding-related term so they wrote 餼 for that meaning. P0M 06:30, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I've replaced the image with a new image that gives correct information. P0M 08:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The new images are an improvement, thanks. --Fire Star 火星 21:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

What I would like to see but am not competent to add myself is the entire suite of historical characters for qi, using the same set as the Chinese character article: Oracle Bone Script, Seal Script, Clerical Script, Semi-Cursive Script, Cursive Script, Regular Script (Traditional), and Regular Script (Simplified). I have searched the web without success for such a reference set for qi. I would also like to know if there is a book in the reference section that covers the character representations of qi in depth. I am especially interested in the Oracle Bone form of the word, and wonder whether its usage today would create confusion with the character for the number 3 or with any other Chinese character, but this last question may be beyond the level of detail appropriate for a Wikipedia article. Even without any of these changes, the existing article is very useful, so thanks to those who have worked on it. Toad42 22:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The top of the article currently has the oracle, seal, and traditional forms. I guess we could put the whole set at the top of this talk page, but I don't think so much calligraphy belongs in the article. The Chines character for 3 is made with three very straight lines. The oracle bone form of qi is made with three wavy lines. It is possible that the later forms developed because sloppy writing could create mistakes in communication. P0M 00:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Martial arts

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)

[edit] Spam

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)

[edit] fundamental sources

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)

I've added material. Most of the basic ideas regarding qi in philosophy texts are included in these three groups of quotations. P0M 00:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Qi in the martial arts

“ Qi is a central concept in many Chinese, Korean and Japanese martial arts. While a traditional Neo-Confucian explanation of the principle is given in most martial art schools, many New Age-oriented or neo-ninja schools approach the subject from a more syncretist point of view, especially in the west. ”

I'm not quite sure what is trying to be said here, but 'Neo-Confucian' and 'syncretist' doesn't quite explain their beliefs, only who they are. Reading the rest of the article helps somewhat, but there should be a more thorough explanation of the different beliefs regarding Qi in martial arts.

— Sasuke Sarutobi 11:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A major addition

I have put in a section on what the Chinese actually said about qi during the first several centuries. I note that much of the rest of this article lacks citations. Some of the ideas expressed seem plausible, but we need the actual citations.

At one point the text says something that I'd really like to have a citation for. Well, actually I think it is probably just wrong, but I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt. The sentence is:

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.

First, the Chinese did not have the concept of "matter." What they did have, and what the writer may have been referring to , is the concept of 質 zhi. Unfortunately for my now half hairless head, they barely bother to even make a drive-by stab at defining this term. Seen in context over and over again I finally felt confident enough to translate it as "materialized life breath." They seem to believe that qi can somehow be concentrated, precipitated, coagulated, inspissated... Then, like a ghost in a novel or like somebody coming out of the Startrek transporter, the stuff "materializes" in solid form somewhere. It can also go back into its "qi" phase. But nobody is very clear on how it is all supposed to happen. But I don't recall any argument about this idea. It is already in the Huai Nan Zi, and nobody argues against that idea either as far as I know.

The one idea that perhaps comes closest to that of a qi that "exists distinct from matter" would be the account that says that in the beginning there was something called "primal qi" and that it (somehow) got itself together to form things. So according to that theory, qi was first and organization (li) came afterwards.

What actually happens in Neo-Confucianism, and particularly in the philosophy of Zhu Xi, is that they have two theories going and can't decide how to get rid of one or the other. They're both too venerable I guess. Anyway, modern scholars of Neo-Confucianism such as Mou Zong-san claim adamantly that Zhu Xi was a dualist. He believed that li and qi were co-eval, and that for whatever reason li get hold of qi and shapes it into the forms that we experience in our everyday world. But modern scholars like Tang Jun-yi argue just the opposite, saying that Zhu Xi is a monist, that primal li is (like whatever is "before" the Big Bang) is outside the Universe, that it "moves" (whatever that can mean when you are talking about something with no phenomenal traits), and that in its waxing it produces cosmic Yang and then in its waning it produces cosmic Yin, and then it goes back to its waxing phase.

I will rewrite the passage I've quoted above unless somebody comes up with a citation. P0M 04:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] And a deletion

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)

[edit] Neo-Confucianism?

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)

An afterthought: Could people have been thinking about Taiji quan and linking the idea in that school (and also in Aikido) that one can "link up" with the Taiji and gain its power? P0M 19:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Confusion?

Um...The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy has an entry for ch'i ("Chinese term for ether, air, corporeal vital energy, and the "atmosphere" of a season, person, event or work."), and a definition for two words both given as chih ("Chinese term roughly corresponding to 'knowledge'"; "Chinese term often translated as 'will'"). Both of these spellings redirect here, but this entry seems to only capture the first one. Could someone who knows Chinese fix this problem? Should chih just be made a separate page, or does it already exist somewhere under some other spelling? - KSchutte 19:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Where do they redirect from? There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Chinese characters with that pronunciation. The two mentioned above are 智, knowledge, wisdom, and 志, will, or somewhat better, aspirations. Neither of those two have much to do with qi. The word that is connected with qi in the philosophy of the Neo-Confucians is 質, which is second tone. (The other two happen to be fourth tone words.) This one means something that can best, but ineloquently, be translated as "stuff."
I'll have a look around. Maybe I can fix whatever the problem is. P0M 22:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, until somebody objects to a stub I think I've fixed the problem. I've created a brief article on "chih" and a redirect from "zhi" to "chih." I guess somebody thought "chih" was close enough to "ch'i" to be the same thing... P0M 03:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A new contributor argues against "energy"

The following material was included directly in the article. It has been moved here for discussion. P0M 06:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Is Energy a Good Translation for Chi…? At the beginning of our time, the ancient Chinese once thought that Chi was the micro-substance which made up all the matter in the universe. Thus the term Chi has a great influence in the Tradition Chinese Medicine (TCM). The term Chi has many meanings depends on the context. For example, Chi by itself means air. However, in Chi Kung, we are involved in breathing methods, therefore, Chi means breathing here. Hence, Chi Kung is an ultimate breathing method.

In TCM, the term Chi was used very loosely. In my native acupuncture book described Chi as follows: Chi is the functional activities of the internal organs. In order for our body to be in the state of homeostasis, the organs must interact with each other. One organ produced a product and passed on to another. For example, the liver converts the glycogen into glucose and carried by the blood inside the body. It is considered that Chi is flowing properly; because the liver is performing its function, which is part of the somatic activities. If the liver stop functioning, not able to convert glucose to keep the Chi flow, it is considered that Chi is clogged.

The TCM practitioner might say that the Chi is weak in one’s body. It simply means that some of the organs are not functioning properly. This is how Chi is expressed in the Chinese society. Among the Chinese people, they just know the term Chi, but cannot explain it explicitly.

There is an old Chinese proverb says: If something is not named correctly, then it cannot be described properly. In the case of Chi, translated as Energy. The original meaning has been changed completely. As we can see, Energy does not match the meanings as described above. Unfortunately, scientists tried to conduct experiment on this imaginary Energy theory and still have not come to any conclusion. Why, it is because due to the mistranslation of the term Chi as Energy. We are abided by the limited definition of Energy; and went off tangent of the right track.

If we treated Chi as Chi, then we may find a way to prove it as energy. If we cannot prove it as Energy, then we still have Chi to work with. In fact, Chi is not Energy; it has to be something else. Now, Chi is still an open item to be investigated. In the other word, if we insist Chi as Energy, it will be a dead end.

In conclusion, the mistranslation of Chi as Energy is due to the language barrier between two cultures. Chi was never meant as a form of energy in the Chinese society. Calling Chi as Energy is totally mistranslated. Mistranslation will cause misinterpretations and misleading. The imaginary Energy is causing the scientific investigation come to a co-de-sac. That is why, up until now, modern science still cannot come up with a scientific explanation.ChiDragon 22:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

There are many good points in the above discussion. Western translators of high repute have been guilty of translating such terms as "qi" with whatever words sound right to them in English. The Western idea of energy as we use it today is a very sophisticated concept. The Chinese did not have an indigenous term with the same energy, so translations of terms like "solar energy" are somewhat problematical. (Fortunately physicists get to deal with lab instruments, measurements, calculations, etc., so the conceptual problem is not too bad.)
By the time people in China were getting rather technical in their discussions of qi, especially with the creation of Zhu Xi's philosophy, qi and li were seen as mutually aspective. In some contexts it seems appropriate to translate li as "potential," because li tells us whether something can possibly occur, or whether it is likely to occur. So it is difficult to find qi discussed in isolation where we might better assess how close it comes to meaning something like "energy." Much earlier, what we call the radient energy emitted by a fire may have been explained as the qi given off by the burning wood. But we never find cases (to my knowledge at least) where one talks about "harvesting" the qi of a fire and investing it somehow in another process.
Some acupuncturists maintain that in treating a patient they can somehow deplete their own system of a certain amount of qi and transfer it to the patient. Qi seems to be regarded as a fluid, not as an energy field or a flux of photons or anything like that. But we need specific quotations to be able to get clear on what is actually being claimed. The result of the transfer of qi is not necessarily immediately manifested. It does not result in a heating of the body parts being treated, for instance. It does not feel like an electrical current being directed through some body part. If one were to speak of it as "emergy" in this context then one would have to hypostatize something like a car battery that could be charged by the contribution of the acupuncturist. But, to the contrary, the understanding seems to be that qi flows into the patient's body and "does its own thing" over the next several hours. Calling qi energy just draws in all sorts of unwanted comparisons and assumptions. P0M 06:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Header too long

The lead paragraph is waaaaaay too long and repeats info that is contained later in the article. Famousdog 19:22, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The lead paragraph is currently six lines long. P0M 19:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, cause I moved non-header stuff to a section of its own! Famousdog 15:44, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Really needs citations

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)

[edit] Wolf ticket on references

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)

If there are no longer any complaints about paucity of references, why not remove that notice? P0M 22:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed for discussion -- what does this passage really mean?

Views of qi as an esoteric "force" tend to be more prominent in the West, where it has sometimes been associated with New Age spiritualism. These views are less prominent in modern communist China, where traditional Chinese medicine is often practiced and considered effective, but in which esoteric notions of qi are considered to contradict Marxist notions of dialectic materialism. China's current government in fact formally embraces anti-spiritual atheism. Many traditional martial arts schools also eschew a supernatural approach to the issue, identifying "external qi" or "internal qi" as representative of the varying leverage principles used to improve the efficacy of a well-trained, healthier than normal body with a given work load.

"More prominent in the West"? More prominent there than where?

What are these "esoteric" notions of qi? Discussions about qi have been going on for more than 2000 years, and there is nothing secret about them.

Do the traditional ideas of qi really contradict Marxism? There is no god involved, no "out of this universe" reality that explains what is really real. So what is the Marxist complaint, if it really exists. It ought to be possible to document this complaint for the article if it is really being made.

The part about "varying leverage principles" is at best very badly stated (and I'm not sure what the writer was trying to assert). Chinese MA knows about leverage as anybody who has studied qin na or aikido becomes acutely aware. But qi is about what what one puts into the systems of levers. The levers are just bones and connective tissue, and they would follow their leverage rules even if they were powered by hydraulic systems. P0M 23:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

When I was working with my second MA teacher, 陳眉壽 Chen Mei-shou, I used to watch him as he walked around the dojo. Whether coming upstairs, or going downstairs or just walking across the tatami, he would frequently raise one or both hands palm-up to a little above shoulder level as though he were raising a sparrow to eye level to have a good look at it, rotate his hand to point palm-down and then slowly push his hand down, basically all on a straight vertical line that followed him wherever he went. He had other little exercises like that. I judged, based on things that he had said in class, that he was inhaling as he raised his hand and exhaling as he depressed it. And I decided that it was one of his ways of practicing keeping all of his activities consistent with each other.

Years later I was working with a great Wado teacher, Mr. Kurobane, and he criticized my beginning attempts at sparring. He said I couldn't accomplish very much if I was going forward to attack with my fist but my feet were retreating at the same time. That's what I mean above by consistency of motions. But integration of function goes beyond that kind of thing.

My very first teacher was a White Crane teacher, and all the kata that he taught to me involved a peculiar kind of breathing exercise. He said it was intended to strengthen my abdominals so that if somebody tried to knock the wind out of me I'd have the strength to protect myself. But I noticed that although a few minutes before I had been so cold that my hands were turning blue and I could hardly hold a pen to write my lessons with, soon after I began this exercise I was more than comfortably warm, and after class I could sit around without my ski sweater and leather jacket on and still feel comfortable. One of the things that I know that this exercise does is to raise core body temperature. It has kept me comfortable while sleeping in snow caves in Colorado in the winter and while bobbing around dealing with a capsized sail boat in a northern lake in the spring time. But there are those who say that one also learns to more quickly and effectively mobilize energy in the body (glycogen to glucose), increase the number of muscle fibres that fire together when an emergency burst of force is required, etc. All of these things have to do with how much energy I can direct out against the world, either to move things away or to keep them from driving in toward me. That energy can be put into some move that involves leverage, but that doesn't change the mechanical advantage of a particular lever set-up.

The Japanese word "aikido" is, literally, the way that is concerning with joining one's qi with the qi of one's opponent. That idea has something to do, peripherally at least, with the idea of leverage because what one is aiming to be able to do is to make oneself and one's opponent part of the same physical system and to do so in such a way that one becomes the pivot (literally or figuratively) around which this system moves. To do so requires more than just physically attaching oneself to one's opponent. In fact, actually grabbing one's opponent effectively gives him a free grip on you. Instead, one wants to join the system by which one is aware of and controls one's own body to the other person's system, but to become the "living" part of the system while the opponent becomes either the paralyzed or at least the spastic part of the system. Again, the key idea is to mobilize energy from one's bodily researves (or borrow from the Taiji if you believe the theories), and direct its application so perfectly so that the total system (oneself alone or oneself as linked to an opponent) is integrated and does what you want it to with the minimum expenditure of energy, the minimum application of force. Somebody grabs both your shoulders from behind and you send him flying by lying down for a nap. Well, maybe just a short rest. But it requires very little energy and creates a great effect. All it requires is that you do it so impeccably that the attacker is flying before he realizes that he ought to have let go.

And one other thought. My Praying Mantiss teacher used to stress the idea of a jìng dào, a sort of "power configuration" through which actions had to travel to be truly effective. How does one get a bullwhip to snap? Two people pick up the same bull whip. The experienced user can make it snap. The beginner cannot. The "levers" involved are the same for everybody. Whether the whip snaps or not depends on the path in space and time that the various parts of the whip move through. Similarly, using a technique similar to Taiji quan to pick up a 200 pound man as though he weighed 20 pounds depends almost entirely on how two bodies interact when both move toward each other and contact at a certain point in the "power configuration" of each forward motion. The only real leverage use comes immediately after contact when the person doing the lifting may pivot to change the trajectories of the two bodies from "straight on" to "far gone." P0M 01:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nature of Qi section needs rewrite

This section is strongly POV, and it so much written from the point of view of the average Western person that it is difficult to see the problem.

The first sentence says:

The nature of qi is a matter of controversy among those students of the subject who accept it as a valid concept, while those who dismiss its very existence ignore it, except for purposes of discussion with its adherents.

To me, this passage says that there might be something called qi, but, whatever it is not even those who "accept it as a valid concept" can agree on what it is. And then there are those who are only concerned to tear qi down because they do not believe in it. Presumably the believe in something else then.

Notice that by a sleight of hand qi has been given the status of a concept and not something that is purportedly real and about which concepts have been formulated. If that sounds o.k. to you, try something like:

Matter is a concept.
Energy is a concept.
Henry Kissinger is a concept.
God is a (mere) concept.

In all these cases, people have experiences of a something, or a set of somethings, and then they try to conceptualize the "something" in a fruitful way.

Look at the history of the use of the word "qi." Chinese people saw something going on. Their minds drew this "thing" out from the cluttered background of experience and said, "Something is going on here, and here, and here... And it's all the same somehow. I'm going to call it "qi," and here's how I think it works, what I think it is."

The same thing happened in the West with our idea of "matter." Actually, its history has a few more wrinkles in it than does the Chinese idea of qi, but it's pretty clear that the Western people who discuss matter and the Chinese people who discuss qi are often trying to talk about the same phenomena.

Similarly, the Western people who talk about Platonic ideas, Aristotelian forms, etc., are talking about the same general kind of phenomena, regularities of appearance, functioning, etc., that the Chinese are talking about when they are discussing li.

It is incorrect to say that the meaning of the word "qi" is the same as the meaning of the word "matter". The words are obviously different, but the concepts that are attached to them also prove (and you don't have to dig very deep, either) to be different.

A parallel situation occurs in the physics of the early 20th century. Everybody knew light when they saw it. They had even figured out that there was light at frequencies that humans could not see. But some of the people who investigated light conceptualized it as a wave -- and for very good reasons. Similarly, some of the investigators characterized it as a particle -- also for undeniably good reasons.

Some wag tried to skate around the issue by calling light a "wavicle," but everybody knew that was a joke. So was "wave light" to be explained in terms of "particle light" or vice-versa? It turned out that you couldn't do either.

So here you had two different fundamental concepts, neither reducible to the other. Investigate light one way and you'll see its wave nature. Investigate light the other way and you see its particle nature. But then you are stuck with the two of them.

For the Chinese, qi is a fundamental concept. Unless you go to the metaphysical level, there is no more way to explain qi than there is to explain matter. It is a fundamental concept, something that is used to explain other things. It is not composed of something else. It is not divisible into sub-components. It just is.

For the West, matter is a fundamental concept. String theory tries to go deeper, but so far nothing in that realm of discourse has panned out very well. The deepest our knowledge now goes is that matter and energy are somehow aspects of the same "thing," i.e., matter can be converted to energy and energy can be converted to matter.

If one person looks at the jet emerging from a boiling tea pot and says, "That's steam, a form of matter, coming out the spout," and another person looks at the same thing and says, "That's zheng qi, a form of qi, coming out the spout," you have two people looking at the same thing. One is naming and conceptualizing it one way, and the other is naming and conceptualizing it a different way. When you compare two concepts you will either find out that they are actually identical (as when Schrödinger's quantum theory turned out to be mathematically convertible into Heisenberg's quantum theory -- even though they looked much different in the forms they originally appeared in), or you will find that there is what Aquinas called a "conflict of notes," i.e., the category definitions conflict with each other in some fatal way. If that happens you can't decide things by privileging one system or the other. If you start out by defining the Chinese system as correct, then of course the Western system will be "wrong," and vice-versa.

So saying "Your idea of qi can't be right because it disagrees with Newton's Physics right here on page 283," only works if you assume that Newton is unassailable. If God spoke in Newton's ear, then qi is a bum idea. But we already know that God didn't speak in Newton's ear. Even so, we are not stymied yet.

The correct way to discover whether qi or whether matter is a correct way to start describing the Universe is not to do something analogous to 20th century physicists going to Rome and debating wave vs. particle before the Pope. The way to discover whether these are valid conceptualizations, conceptualizations that we have no good reason to throw away, is to work with them in a cogent way to see whether they lead us astray.

Surprise! Matter led us astray. Newton told us that matter was matter now and evermore, and energy was energy forever and ever. When it turned out that matter could be converted into energy we did not abandon those concepts, we just tailored them to fit reality a bit closer.

So what can we say about qi? We can say that some people in the West do not accept that conceptualization of nature because it covers most of the same ground that their concept of "matter" covers and they are uncomfortable with overlapping descriptions of nature. We can say that some people in the West accept the conceptualization because when they use it in certain spheres it allows them to predict ways of achieving desirable results and avoiding undesirable results.

We have a huge job to explain qi. If we want to include the metaphysical explanation (or the Chinese equivalent of the Big Bang theory if you will), then we have to go all the way back to the Tai Ji, how it, a thing outside of space and time, "moves" and produces Yin-Yang, and then how qi comes about as a result of this process that is largely outside our awareness. Even if we just stick with qi, Chinese use it to explain all kinds of phenomena, and it would be easy to exceed the 32K limit just briefly introducing all these wrinkles.

Do we really want to spend a lot of attention on the fact that another system with different fundamental premises will prove incompatible with it sooner or later? Do we really need to referee a dispute between groups of people who may not understand either their own or their opponents philosophies in depth? Probably what we need to do is to point out that when one does cross-system comparisons there are bound to be incompatibilities by the very nature of the comparison being made. P0M 08:02, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Qi/Ki

Did you know that you can actually perform ki. Ki is internal energy inside your body. Alot of people knows how to use there ki. If you want proof look it. go to google, type in ki and it will take you to alot of websites —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andre Jackson (talk • contribs) 15:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

 Of course.  I stumbled upon qi years ago.  At first I thought it slightly wierd but forgot about it.  A while later I thought it some kind of wierd meditative/concentrational force.  Later still, I thought I came upon 'The Force' from starwars.

Now I'm pretty sure its qi, mainly because I was watching a show on it (Discovery Channel probably) and made many connections, biggest of all was that qi was said to be trackable with thermal camera's. It seriously feels like I'm bringing a new energy to wherever I'm concentrating on, and feels either warm or (rarely) cold; I think each might be a different type of qi brought through different concentrations.

Best I can do to explain it other than that, is by saying its also a "sense", a sense of awareness.

As simple as I can put it, if you wish to test me, stare at your hand. Think about your hand. Feel it. Don't feel With it, but simply feel your hand itself. Don't move it either, I find it hard to keep the force going if I start moving the area's I'm concentrating on; drains it.

Currently I know 1 other person who has found it on his own, and have taught it (to a very small and not serious degree) to about 5 people, including a very skeptical and close minded brother--quite the accomplishment. But it usually ends there with people, sadly. The possibilities it opens... ESP could very much be a reality. Funny how unskeptical this has made me. But I must end my rant, class is over. Psycher (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Scrabble

Qi is a commonly used word to get rid of the letter Q. Perhaps this should be mentioned?  :P 91.105.49.201 (talk) 01:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)