Binary Arithmetic, the I Ching and Chinese Natural Theology

Leibniz developed binary arithmetic, representing all numbers using only 0 and 1, publishing his explanation in 1703. Corresponding with the Jesuit missionary Joachim Bouvet, who was stationed in China and sent him a diagram of the I Ching's sixty four hexagrams, Leibniz recognized that the classic Chinese text's broken and unbroken lines formed a binary pattern matching his own system, and concluded, crediting the insight to ancient Chinese thought rather than claiming priority for himself, that the I Ching's legendary originators had anticipated binary mathematics millennia earlier.

That exchange fed directly into Leibniz's final major work, Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese, written in the last year of his life and published posthumously, which argued that classical Confucian thought, properly understood, already contained an implicit monotheism compatible with Christian natural theology rather than being the atheistic system some contemporary European critics claimed. The work positioned Leibniz among the more sympathetic European readers of Chinese religious and philosophical tradition in his era, using it to argue for common rational and theological ground rather than treating it as something to be corrected or dismissed.