Between Scientificity and Esotericism: Vladimir Eremeev’s Reconstruction of the Yijing in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russian Thought
Peiying Lv, Yuan Tao
preprint DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-11110688/v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Eremeev's 'arithmosemiotics' reframed the Yijing as a formal metamodel and a 'lost universal science,' challenging Eurocentric accounts of science and making Chinese thought a resource for Russian debates on rationality and universality. Contends that his shift from formal similarity to ontological unity and historical diffusion conflated claims requiring different kinds of evidence, and characterizes the project as a historically situated 'Russian universalism' rather than an expression of national essence. |
Abstract
Abstract This article broadens the study of Russian thought by examining Vladimir Eremeev’s reconstruction of the Yijing and xiangshu in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Through contextual intellectual history and conceptual analysis, it interprets “arithmosemiotics” as a modern epistemic transformation that reorganized materials from exegesis, divination, cosmology, and technical practice into a formal system of codes, positions, and transformations. The project emerged at the intersection of Soviet scientificity, cybernetics and semiotics, structural analysis in Russian Sinology, and esoteric ideas of universal correspondence and lost knowledge. The Yijing consequently became a metamodel connecting cosmos, body, psyche, society, and different civilizations, as well as the basis of Eremeev’s “lost universal science.” This reconstruction challenged the Eurocentric genealogy of “Greece–Europe–modern science” and made Chinese thought a resource for Russian debates over rationality, science, and universality. Yet Eremeev’s movement from formal similarity to ontological unity and historical diffusion joined claims requiring different forms of evidence. The article defines his project as a historically situated form of “Russian universalism”: not an expression of national essence, but a strategy for renegotiating universal knowledge through non-Western traditions. The case also exposes a central problem in global intellectual history: shifting the geographical centre of knowledge may reproduce a new single-origin narrative unless comparison remains accountable to historical evidence and difference.