Useful or Useless?

[qicat]

http://public.tableau.com/views/TaoTeChingWordAnalysis_0/WordCloud?:embed=y&:loadOrderID=1&:display_count=yes&:tabs=no

 

http://www.kenflerlage.com/2017/03/word-analysis-tao-te-ching.html

 

 

The Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching is the major scripture of Taoism, a religion that claims approximately 20 million adherents, mostly in China and other parts of Southeast Asia.1 Though this number is relatively small compared to other world religions, the Tao Te Ching has had a significant impact on religious and philosophical belief throughout the world.

 

Though scholars have fiercely debated the date, it is believed that the Tao Te Ching was written around 500 BCE.2 The author was Lao Tzu (translated as “Old Master”), a philosopher, teacher, and scholar who worked as a keeper of archives for the royal court of the Zhou Dynasty. He was a contemporary of Confucius and the two are rumored to have met when Confucius was a young man.

 

The Tao Te Ching was most likely written in an calligraphy style called zhuànshū (“seal script”), which was generally used for royal documents.2 “Tao Te Ching” translates to “The Book of the Way of Virtue” and, like other religious texts, is meant as a sort of guidebook to life, addressing topics such as virtue, humility, wisdom, and detachment, many of which are common themes in other eastern religious traditions including Hinduism and Buddhism.

 

Analysis

Like my previous analyses of religious scriptures, I wanted to analyze the words used in the Tao Te Ching to see if we could gain some insight into its key themes. I found an English translation and  used a tool from www.writewords.org to count the occurrences of each word. I then filtered out common and less meaningful words—mostly pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners (for more specifics on this process, see my Bible post).

 

From here, I began to visualize the data in Tableau, starting with the top 10 words (you can find the full visualization here).

 

 

The book as a whole has 4,084 words after filtering out the list of common words (including common words, it has 9,510). The top word, not surprisingly, is “Tao”, appearing 137 times, followed “Nature” at 84, and “People” at 80. From this top ten list alone, we can get some feel for the basic themes of the scripture—truth, virtue, and mastery of self.

 

So that further analysis be performed, beyond just the top 10 words, I’ve also created a simple Word cloud, which includes all words occurring at least five times.

 

 

Of course, we see the top ten words again, but we also see additional frequently used words such as “Desire” and “Desires” (ranked 14th and 20th, respectively), “Man” (ranked 13th), “Nation” (ranked 16th), and “Oneness” (ranked 12th), which help to give us an even deeper understanding the text’s main themes. Interestingly, the principle of Oneness is also a key part of Buddhism, showing some of the similarities between the two religions.

 

That's all for now, but feel free to explore the visualization further; you can find it here.

 

I’ll be back in a few weeks with another analysis of the world’s religious scriptures. When I have completed them, I’ll do one final analysis comparing the word usage in each of the religious texts I’ve discussed. So please check back soon!

 

Please Note: Though I have read The Tao Te Ching and have great respect for the text and the Taoist religion as a whole, I realize that I may have gotten a few things wrong. I welcome your feedback and comments, so feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.

 

Ken Flerlage, March 1, 2017

Twitter | LinkedIn | TableauPublic

 

[dust]

I did a little post with a very basic analysis of word/character frequency a year or two back... and most people seemed to think it was pretty useless

 

Also, this guy seems to have done it with an English translation, which (as you'll see if you look at my analysis) actually ends up with a completely different word count. I'd pay more attention to the Chinese one.

Edited March 4, 2017 by dust

[Marblehead]

Some people find this kind of information useful.  It does highlight the word/concepts that seem to be most important to the author.

 

And yes, as Dust pointed out, probably best to do the analysis of the most accepted original Chinese vrsion and then translate those into English.

[Stosh]

I got an error trying to see the tabulation, ,,to see if it Ever says the words yin or yang.

[Mig]

http://public.tableau.com/views/TaoTeChingWordAnalysis_0/WordCloud?:embed=y&:loadOrderID=1&:display_count=yes&:tabs=no

 

http://www.kenflerlage.com/2017/03/word-analysis-tao-te-ching.html

I still don't understand why using the word saint 聖人 as it seems the appropriate way to translate is "sage". Is that the way people still understand the sage as a saint? And which translation did he use to make word analysis?

Edited May 14, 2017 by Mig

[Marblehead]

The word "saint" may well be a useful word in the Chinese language.  Personally, I think the word carries too many non-Chinese connotations for it to be used when speaking of Daoist Philosophy. 

 

[dawei]

On 5/14/2017 at 0:47 PM, Mig said:

I still don't understand why using the word saint 聖人 as it seems the appropriate way to translate is "sage". Is that the way people still understand the sage as a saint? And which translation did he use to make word analysis?

 

Also consider that the Jesuits were actually working within the chinese court... it is an interesting period to read about.

 

How would they of choosen to translate 聖人 ?

 

IMO, Saint carries too much of a religious slang.   Sage seems better to me.

 

Reflections on the Jesuit Mission to China - Harvard University

 

 

 

[Taoist Texts]

6 hours ago, dawei said:

 

Also consider that the Jesuits were actually working within the chinese court... it is an interesting period to read about.

 

How would they of choosen to translate 聖人 ?

 

 

Chinese Materials in the Jesuit Archives in Rome, 14th-20th ...

The cover bears a label:聖人行實(Life of the Saints)

Edited May 20, 2017 by Taoist Texts