中国的文化底蕴究竟有多高深？ 第1页

2020年11月，计算所徐志伟研究员曾做过一个题为《创新之书<太玄经>初探——从计算机科教融合看创新四箴言》的报告。报告开头介绍了莱布尼茨的学术贡献，其中一个贡献便是发明了基于0和1的二进制算术。但徐老师还讲了一个关于莱布尼茨和二进制令人深思的片段：

莱布尼茨大约在1700年左右便发明了二进制，并在1701年写成了一篇论文《数字新科学》（Essay d′unne nouvelle Science des Nombres）提交给巴黎皇家科学院。然而结果是被拒稿，理由是“看不出二进制有何用处”。

随后，莱布尼茨写信给居住在北京的法国耶稣会神父白晋（Joachim Bouvet）并介绍了论文的主要内容。白晋于11月14 日回信，指出了莱布尼茨二进制与伏羲八卦图的相似之处。莱布尼茨恍然大悟，称终于找到了二进制的“极大用途”（Les grandes utilités）——解释来自中国的伏羲八卦图。于是他对《数字新科学》这篇论文进行了大幅修改——强调二进制的用途，并增补了关于“伏羲八卦”的内容。

莱布尼茨于1703年完成了论文修改，论文题目则改为《论只使用符号0和1的二进制算术，兼论其用途及它赋予伏羲所使用的古老图形的意义》。这一次论文被接受，于1705年在《1703年皇家科学院年鉴》上发表。

莱布尼茨发明二进制、发表论文的故事，反映了300多年前中国文化在欧洲是有很有影响力的。在莱布尼茨的论文中，有相当的篇幅都是介绍伏羲和八卦，以及对汉字的思考。论文行文中充满对中国古人和中国文化（汉字）的溢美之词，同时也能看到他对破解八卦的奥秘而带来的自信和骄傲。

说实话，从莱布尼茨的论文中也能看到当时中国和欧洲在科学研究上的差距。这篇文章虽然篇幅不长，但表述相当严谨，有定义，有图例，有引用；论文还充满科学情怀，富有格局——思考如何帮助人类进步。这些都还是相当令人钦佩，也是值得我们学习的地方。

这里有一个莱布尼茨论文的英文版本，把和伏羲八卦相关的篇幅翻译成了中文，和大家分享（英文版很是晦涩，翻译不当之处请指正）：

What is amazing in this reckoning is that this arithmetic by 0 and 1 is found to contain the mystery of the lines of an ancient King and philosopher named Fuxi, who is believed to have lived more than 4000 years ago, and whom the Chinese regard as the founder of their empire and their sciences.2 There are several linear figures attributed to him, all of which come back to this arithmetic, but it is sufficient to give here the Figure of the Eight Cova, as it is called, which is said to be fundamental, and to join to them the explanation which is obvious, provided that one notices, firstly, that a whole line — means unity, or 1, and secondly, that a broken line -- means zero, or 0.

令人惊叹的是，基于0和1的二进制被发现包含了一位古代皇帝和哲学家伏羲所创造的线段符号的奥秘。伏羲生活在4000多年前，被中国人认为是他们帝国的创世神和人文先哲。伏羲创造了几幅由线段符号构成的可表示二进制的图，被称为“八卦”。这里列出了最基本的八卦图及其对应的解释——完整的线段表示1，断开的线段则表示0。

The Chinese lost the meaning of the Cova or Lineations of Fuxi, perhaps more than a thousand years ago, and they have written commentaries on the subject in which they have sought I know not what far out meanings, so that their true explanation now has to come from Europeans. Here is how: It was scarcely more than two years ago that I sent to Reverend Father Bouvet,3 the celebrated French Jesuit who lives in Peking, my method of counting by 0 and 1, and nothing more was required to make him recognize that this was the key to the figures of Fuxi. Writing to me on 14 November 1701, he sent me this philosophical prince's grand figure, which goes up to 64, and leaves no further room to doubt the truth of our interpretation, such that it can be said that this Father has deciphered the enigma of Fuxi, with the help of what I had communicated to him. And as these figures are perhaps the most ancient monument of [GM VII, p227] science which exists in the world, this restitution of their meaning, after such a great interval of time, will seem all the more curious.

大约一千多年前，中国人丢失了伏羲的八卦或者说线段符号的真正含义。他们为此撰写了大量注疏，但他们的理解其实差得很远，使得今天对于八卦的正确诠释只能来自欧洲人。以下是具体过程：就在两年前，我把自己发明的基于0和1的二进制寄给了一位生活在北京的令人尊敬的法国耶稣会神父白晋，无需任何解释，他一眼就看出来这就是伏羲八卦图的本质。在1701年11月14日写给我的回信中，他把这位哲学王子的伟大的八卦图寄给了我。这些图能一直表示到数字64，也让人没有理由再怀疑我们诠释的正确性。可以说，白晋神父通过和我的交流，帮助他解密了伏羲八卦图的奥秘。这些图可能是这个世界上存在的最古老的科学丰碑。在经历了数以千年的漫长岁月后，它们的含义再次被发现，似乎更令人好奇了。

The agreement between the figures of Fuxi and my Table of Numbers is more obvious when the initial zeros are provided in the Table; they seem superfluous, but they are useful to better show the cycles of the column, just as I have provided them in effect with little rings, to distinguish them from the necessary zeros. And this agreement leaves me with a high opinion of the depth of Fuxi's meditations, since what seems easy to us now was not so at all in those far-off times. The binary or dyadic arithmetic is, in effect, very easy today, with little thought required, since it is greatly assisted by our way of counting, from which, it seems, only the excess is removed. But this ordinary arithmetic by tens does not seem very old, and at least the Greeks and the Romans were ignorant of it, and were deprived of its advantages. It seems that Europe owes its introduction to Gerbert, who became Pope under the name of Sylvester II, who got it from the Moors of Spain.

如果把初始的0加入到我发明的二进制数字表中，那么伏羲八卦图和我的数字表之间的一致性就更显而易见了。这些0似乎是多余的，但它们能帮助更好地展现数字表中的竖列其实也是一个循环圆周的特点，当我加上这些初始0后便形成了一个个小环，从而和其他的0区分出来了。这种一致性让我对伏羲的思考之深感到赞叹，因为在今天看来这似乎很容易，但在远古时代则完全不可想象。事实上，今天只需要很少的思考就能很容易理解二进制算术，这得益于我们如今的（十进制）计数方式——似乎只需要把超过二进制的数去除就行。然而这种十进制算术的出现并不久远，至少希腊人和罗马人并不知道，未能抓住十进制算术的优点。也许欧洲人应该感谢后来成为教宗西尔维斯特二世的葛培特，因为是他从西班牙的摩尔人那里引入了十进制。

Now, as it is believed in China that Fuxi is even the author of Chinese characters, although they were greatly altered in subsequent times, his essay on arithmetic leads us to conclude that something considerable might even be found in these characters with regard to numbers and ideas, if one could discover the foundation of Chinese writing, all the more since it is believed in China that he had consideration for numbers when establishing them. Reverend Father Bouvet is strongly inclined to push this point, and very capable of succeeding in it in various ways. However, I do not know if there was ever an advantage in this Chinese writing similar to the one that there necessarily has to be in the Characteristic I project, which is that every reasoning derivable from notions could be derived from these notions' characters by a way of reckoning, which would be one of the more important means of assisting the human mind.

如今，在中国人们相信伏羲也是汉字的创造者。虽然汉字后来被大幅改变，但伏羲关于算术的论述让我们能得出这样的结论——既然在中国人们都相信伏羲创造数字时有深入的思考，那么如果有人能发现汉字的本质，就很有可能可以在汉字中找到一些关于数字想法的东西。尊敬的白晋神父非常想去探寻汉字的奥秘，也很有能力通过多种方式找到一些奥秘。不过，我还不清楚汉字是否拥有类似于通用表意文字（Characteristica Universalis，莱布尼兹设想的一种通用的形式化语言）所具备的优势——基于概念的推理能根据描述概念的文字以计算的方式推导出来，这将会是帮助人类的更重要的工具之一。

这个东西对比才有成就感，影响我们中国人两千多年的《老子》《道德经》，最早文字出土文物，郭店楚墓公元前300年。

《诗经》有公元前400年竹简文物流传，保存在安徽大学《安大简》。

《论语》有公元前50年，定州汉墓竹简实物文物出土。

几乎中国现在流传的先贤典籍都有文字文物出土，而且这些文物的出土年代都是公元前。而且历代流传有序，什么意思呢想？就是每一代《道德经》的记述，注解，都有详细的史料流传，中国所有典籍都是如此。全都有据可查。

反观欧洲，除了《圣经》之外，影响西方精神的亚里士多德，柏拉图，苏格拉底这些人的典籍，99%的最早文物都截止于公元12世纪，不是公元前，是公元，也就是说900多年前。

欧洲文明的核心理论学说，竟然没有十二世纪前文字文物，没有文物也就算了，竟然连传承历史都没有。神奇的出现了在阿拉伯的图书馆里。印在了中国纸的书上，以及少数羊皮纸手抄本上，怎么来的？没人知道，怎么流传的？没人知道。

就这样希腊先贤们的文献就蹦出来了，但是目前目前仍没有文字文物来佐证，欧洲人也不肯承认这些书，是阿拉伯学者们拖名而写。

无根浮萍，看看世界这些文化强国，日本除了《源氏物语》比较早，但是再早也没有早过唐。

韩国呵呵呵呵。

印度除了那本《婆罗衍那》还有啥，自己的历史还要靠玄奘的《大唐西域传》来考据。

英国：我们精神在希腊。

法国：我们源头在希腊。

美国：biubiu。