Chapter 42

Chapter 42

The Tao gave birth to One.
The One gave birth to Two.
The Two gave birth to Three.
The Three gave birth to all of creation.

All things carry Yin
yet embrace Yang.
They blend their life breaths
in order to produce harmony.

People despise being orphaned, widowed and poor.
But the noble ones take these as their titles.
In losing, much is gained,
and in gaining, much is lost.

What others teach I too will teach:
“The strong and violent will not die a natural death.”

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It is known that Hegel was particularly interested in this chapter because of the simple arithmetics that Laozi provides. However, Laozi fails to explain how the tao – or presumably, “nothing” – engenders 1, or “something.” It is very unclear how something can be created out of nothing. Or if the tao is a transcendental, governing law that engenders something out of nothing – that is, rather than the tao being “nothingness” – it is unclear how the tao can exist independently in the midst of “nothingness.”

It is also noteworthy that Laozi does not say that the tao created everything instantly. Rather, he explains that the things are created through a succession: one from tao, two from one, three from two… This likely suggests the property of emergence. If infinite regress is impossible in the state of affairs as Aristotle notes, the very first cause of the universe may be referred to as the tao. However, the tao is, in most cases, not the direct cause of the things that exist in the universe. The tao begets several things in the first place, and those begotten things create other things; in this case, the tao-produced “begotten things” become the direct cause of the “other things.”

The above-described way of working of the tao can be likened to independent variables and dependent variables found in several equations in economics. Here, the tao is like one independent variable based upon which dependent variables are determined.

For example,

X = aY + bZ

Z = cY + d

Regarding the above equations, we can argue that Y is the independent variable and that X and Z are dependent variables. The dependent/independent relationship is summarized as follows: Y=>X, Z

Here, Z is created out of Y; and X out of Y and Z. Therefore, both X and Z are reducible to Y.

However, it also happens that we can reverse the relationship as follows:

Y = (X – bZ)/a = [X - b (cY+d)]/a,

(a+bc)Y = X-bd,

Y = (X-bd)/(a+bc)

The above expression suggests that we can eliminate Z and regard Y in terms of X, which suggests that: X => Y. Here, X is the independent variable, and Y is the dependent variable. Let us exclude the Z variable from this analogical discussion. (In this case, the Z variable can be simply treated like a parameter that we may occasionally use or not use.)

Of course, the above discussion is simply an analogical example. However, the above discussion shows that it is difficult to definitely say which comes first and which comes last. When we say that Y is the sole independent variable, this fact can be reversed by constructing it as a dependent variable that is yielded by the new independent variable which was previously one of the dependent variables. Anyway, in relation to the content of this chapter, I would say that the tao system described in the chapter is akin to the system of equations that all base themselves on the variable X as a sole independent variable.

Let us put the equations aside. Now, let us ask ourselves again without equations: How can we say that the tao pervades everything? If it is the first cause of everything, it should remain the immovable first cause. However, the above chapters of the tao te ching seem to emphasize consistently that the tao exists everywhere because it is like water. In one of the later chapters, Lao Tzu notes that the tao proceeds by contraries. Note the word “proceed.” Maybe the tao is both the first cause and the totality of everything.