Chinese eight signs prediction ontology, knowledge, and computation

Abstract

How do ontological assumptions in divination shape the structure of the techniques and the way practitioners understand their capacity to know about human fate? In eight signs divination—a birthdate-based method used to predict the fate of an individual—human lives are said to be determined by Heaven, an infallible and impersonal force that regulates everything in the cosmos through the expansionary flow of cor-relative cosmology and qi transformations. Such ontological assumptions correspond to epistemological operations as can be seen in the concrete working of eight signs divination in Taiwan. Eight signs prediction relies on classificatory and reductive mathematical procedures—involving congruence and combinatorial calculations—to logically unfold a determin-istic and cyclical cosmos.