Casting Away Doubt (Jueyi 決疑) or The Taming of Chance: Some Remarks on Equiprobability in Divination Techniques in Imperial China

Abstract This article addresses the ways in which chance was rationalized, in particular through empirical observations of the outcomes of cleromantic divination procedures and mathematical theory in imperial China. It is shown that the non-existence of a theory of probability is not a relevant historical problem for the case of China. By looking at the theoretical probabilities with which certain results could be obtained, the example of Yijing divination reveals a historical tendency in its many shortcuts and variants towards schemes with equiprobable or at least symmetric results. Although no explicit concept of probability emerged in China, the quantification of chances was empirically understood at least since the Han and mathematically modelled in the seventeenth century. The article thus contributes to the history of quantification of chance outside of Europe by looking at the Chinese cultural context without assuming a normative emergence of a theory of probability.