The Wisdom of Life — Where We Come From and Where We Are Going

This book advances the Lao–Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC), arguing that the two thirteen-character propositions of the Daodejing—the Generation Chain (“Dao generates One; One generates Two; Two generates Three; Three generates the myriad things”) and the Following Chain (“Human follows Earth; Earth follows Heaven; Heaven follows Dao; Dao follows its own nature”), twenty-six characters in all—together constitute a complete answer to humanity’s three ultimate questions: where we come from (cosmology), where we are going (worldview), and why we live (life-view). The work has four parts. Part I decodes the Generation Chain: Dao is the Milky Way, One the Sun, Two the Earth, Three the Moon; the Sun–Earth–Moon (SEM) ternary system jointly bears life and civilization. All six links share a single mechanism—the self-organization of dissipative structures—yielding a scientific restatement of “Dao generates the myriad things,” demarcated from both creationism and pantheism. Part II decodes the Following Chain: it argues that fa must be construed as “follows,” not “imitates/emulates,” so that humanity is a law-abiding node within a nested system. It analyzes the anti-Dao path (the Three-Level Greedy Positive-Feedback Model, 3L-GFM, and the thermodynamic collapse of the Greedy Empire) and the pro-Dao path (Natural Cybernetics, negative feedback, resilience, circular metabolism), and introduces the Civilization Stability Function Λ = ΔCCF/(ρᵣ·DAF) and Sage Entropy dS/dt = ρᵣ·DAF/ΔCCF, with the critical value Λ = 1 marking the fork between persistence and collapse—thereby restating “Dao follows nature” as a normative, not fatalistic, thesis: there are two destinations, and the choice is ours. Part III reconstructs “Heaven–Human Union.” It first restores the concept’s source, reclaiming it from the Confucian correlative (Dong Zhongshu), moralizing (Zhang Zai’s “establishing the mind for Heaven and Earth”), and metaphysical (modern New Confucian) appropriations, and returning it to the naturalistic union of Zhuangzi and Huang–Lao—whose content simply is “Dao follows nature”—now grounded empirically. Through a threefold resolution (is/ought, process/result, cybernetic coupling) it dissolves the apparent tension between the hierarchy of “Human follows Earth” and the fusion of “Heaven–Human Union,” and defines Union formally as the complete coupling of the human node with the negative-feedback loops of every nested level—a coupling that is de-centered, non-ethicized, and verifiable. It then reconstructs the highest good and happiness (a Natural Eudaimonia of wu-wei, contentment, and sagely governance) and unfolds a three-tier negative-entropy synergy of meaning—individual, civilizational, cosmic—moving from existentialist nihilism to cosmological settlement. Part IV presents the formal programme and cross- paradigm dialogue: it systematically derives Sage Entropy, Λ, the Wu-Wei Vector WWV = ∇Λ, and the Natural Civilization Index (NCI); states four testable propositions with their data sources and falsification conditions; and engages Descartes, Darwin, Kant, and Einstein, as well as Hansen, Odum, Ayres, and the Stockholm school—positioning LYGC as a “fourth de-centering revolution” after Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein. Beginning in an intuition on the bank of the Han River and ending in a homecoming under the same night sky, the book contends that what Laozi saw by the Han River twenty-five centuries ago is one and the same picture that modern cosmology, dissipative-structure theory, and cybernetics have