From transition to field: Exploring Verbal Epistemology through hexagonal visualization of the I Ching

Abstract

This study brings post-qualitative inquiry, posthumanism, and East Asian thought on change intoconversation to explore a Verbal Epistemology centered on the transition and operation ofknowing, moving beyond a noun-based mode of cognition that apprehends being as a fixedsubstance. The point of departure lies not in the application of external theory, but in existentialruptures encountered through artistic practice—particularly the transformation of the sixty-fourhexagrams of the I Ching into a hexagonal visual language—and through the practice of GanhwaSeon, a Korean form of hwadu-based Zen meditation. Reading these experiences as a form ofperformative epistemology, the study critically examines the limits of modern epistemology,which fixes and represents its object. It argues that posthumanism and post-qualitative inquiryunsettle human-centered cognition and reconfigure research as a field of events, while the IChing’s thought of change and Buddhist notions of dependent origination and non-selfreinterpret being as a relational and transitional verbal event. On this basis, the study proposesVerbal Epistemology not as a closed system, but as a practical device that keeps cognition frombecoming fixed. It further articulates the operating principles of cognition through Transition, thereset of operation (×0), and Field Arrangement, and understands hexagonal visualization as anartistic and epistemological form that returns nounified signs to a field of verbal energy.Ultimately, the study treats the affective dimension that language cannot fully capture not as alimitation but as an achievement, and suggests a horizon of post-qualitative inquiry that privilegesthe continuity of operation over the completion of explanation, and the visualization of affect overthe fidelity of representation.