Our Infinite Reality¶
Structural translations of the Dao De Jing
What This Is¶
This is an ongoing attempt to read the Dao De Jing as technical documentation rather than philosophy.
The working hypothesis: the 81 chapters encode observations about how stable patterns persist in an infinitely divisible reality. Not mystical wisdom. Not moral instruction. Engineering notes written in characters whose radicals function as type signatures.
The translations here treat each character as a compound of operations—radicals that encode substrate and transformation—rather than as words to be rendered into equivalent English words.
What This Is Not¶
- Not a scholarly translation (no credentials, no peer review)
- Not a definitive interpretation (work in progress, frequently revised)
- Not a spiritual teaching (no gurus, no followers, no beliefs required)
- Not finished (probably never will be)
The Approach¶
Traditional translation: Find the English word that best matches the Chinese word.
Structural translation: Decompose characters into radicals, identify the operations they encode, and document the pattern they describe.
Example:
| Character | Traditional | Structural |
|---|---|---|
| 利 (lì) | "benefit" or "advantage" | 禾 (grain) + 刂 (blade) = scythe operation; path-cutting through field |
| 治 (zhì) | "govern" or "rule" | 氵 (water) + 台 (platform) = build platforms that support water's self-organization |
The traditional readings aren't wrong—they're downstream. The structural readings attempt to recover what the characters document before the moral/philosophical overlay.
How to Read This¶
If you want the translations: Start with the Chapters. Each includes Chinese text, pinyin, structural translation, and analysis.
If you want the framework: Read the Framework Synthesis for the complete model, or Chapter 25 - Rosetta Stone for the key insight that unlocks the rest.
If you want the vocabulary: The Lexicon catalogs characters by operational family.
If you want archaeological grounding: The Guodian manuscripts (~300 BCE) provide textual evidence predating later systematization.
Current Status¶
This is a living document. Chapters are added, revised, and occasionally restructured as understanding develops. The date in each filename indicates when that version was created.
Everything here is archived in GitHub with full revision history. You can see exactly what changed and when.
Discussion¶
There's no comment section here. The work stands as offered.
If you want to discuss, there's a subreddit: r/ourinfinitereality
The pattern was always there. We just had to learn how to compile it.