Semanticus F. Alpaerts suggests in De Denkbeeldige Ruimte (1980) that the I Ching or Book of Changes, originating from mythical antiquity, is the first semantic lexicon of mankind. In this Chinese classic, unquestionably one of the most influential books in the world’s literature, 64 chapters are coded with a double triplet line code called hexagrams.

Alpaerts used the Wilhelm (1971) translation to show a possible connection between the code lines from the I Ching and the codon encoding in the Semantic Colour Space. The open (- -) and closed (—) lines from the I Ching correspond with respectively the 0’s and 1’s from his semantic coding system. This way he could associate the concepts described in the 64 chapters of the I Ching, with the eight primary colours and their combinations (8×8) from his classification. Later, his hypothesis was confirmed by a comparative research he conducted on the similarities between his keyword-colour classifications, in which the concepts from the I Ching form an important part, and the empirical data from sociologist Eva Heller’s word-to-colour association study (Alpaerts, 1993).

The following list includes I Ching chapter titles with links to pages in the DSD (between brackets: if the title is not in the DSD, a synonym), chapter numbers, digital coding (hexagram), and colour combinations.

Lakoff and Johnson (1999) saw that there are many proverbs and sayings that have to do with form characteristics and emotions. Parallel / equal movement / oneness: togetherness, concomitant, positive, appropriate, power, strong, suitable, assisted, helped. Perpendicular / disunity: wrong, not combining, opposing, less strong, hindering.

The action of standing in a circle and holding hands as a symbol shows a sense of unity (Blumer, 1969; Cooper et al., 2019)

Fans arriving for the kickoff of Old Dominion University’s (ODU) football game against the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) on September 24, 2016 were greeted with a curious sight. A few minutes before kickoff, fans witnessed ODU mingling in the stadium’s north end zone, and after a few minutes of discussion, players and coaches fanned out in a circle around the end zone, clasping hands with the individual on both sides of them. When the circle was complete, the players lifted their arms up over their heads in unison. The rationale for the gesture, termed the “Circle of Unity” (COU) were feelings of unease and discord about a series of violent incidents involving police and Black men in America. The COU became a symbol in which ODU football players (and sometimes their opponents) could express their displeasure with societal injustices while maintaining the team’s desire to create unity among the country. (O’Hallarn et al., 2021)