Shao Yung (1011–77), Chinese philosopher, a controversial Neo-Confucian figure. His Huangchi ching-shih (‘Ultimate Principles Governing the World’) advances a numerological interpretation of the I-Ching. Shao noticed that the I- Ching expresses certain cosmological features in numerical terms. He concluded that the cosmos itself must be based on numerical relationships and that the I-Ching is its cipher, which is why the text can be used to predict the future. One of Shao’s charts of the I-Ching’s hexagrams came to the attention of Leibniz, who noticed that, so arranged, they can be construed as describing the numbers 0–63 in binary expression. Shao probably was not aware of this, and Leibniz interpreted Shao’s arrangement in reverse order, but they shared the belief that certain numerical sequences revealed the structure of the cosmos. P.J.I.