Scholars › Philosopher / Thinker
Shao Yong
Northern Song thinker of the image-and-number school who lived as a recluse in Luoyang and wrote the cosmological Supreme Principles that Rule the World
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Also known as Zi Yaofu · Hao An Le Xian Sheng · Baiyuan Xiansheng · Shi Kangjie
Shao Yong, courtesy name Yaofu, came from a Fanyang family that had moved to Gongcheng in Weizhou, where as a youth he studied by the Baiyuan spring on Mount Sumen, going without a stove in winter or a fan in summer. The magistrate Li Zhicai taught him the River Chart, the Luo Writing and the trigrams ascribed to Fuxi, from which he built his 'before Heaven' system of images and numbers. Around 1050 he settled in Luoyang, at first in a bare hut, until Fu Bi, Sima Guang, Lu Gongzhu and others bought him a house and garden that he called his Nest of Contentment. He twice refused office on grounds of illness. His *Supreme Principles that Rule the World* (*Huangji jingshi*) charts cosmic history in nested cycles, while his poems in the *Yichuan jirang ji* celebrate a retired life. He died in 1077 at sixty-seven; Cheng Hao wrote his epitaph, and he was later named Kangjie.
Life and times
Dates 1011 CE–1077 CE