Abstract

The outward and extensionary application and expansion of the wuxing idea generated many correspondent systems that have the Five Elements as their fundamental criterion, such as the systems of wuse , wuqi , wuyin , wushi , wufang , and wuwei . Later this further developed beyond the realm of general natural phenomena and entered into the human physical or physiological realm, as in the case of including and involving physical organs and psychological states, such as the theories about wuzhang , wuti , wuqiao , wurong , and wuzhi . These became the foundation categories of Chinese physiology and medicine. What is noteworthy is that these systems, insofar as they are correspondent and relative, are based on the fundamental criterion of the characteristics of the original Five Elements. When people began to comprehend through the characteristics of these Five Elements the objects in corresponding systems and use these to confer on those objects related significances, they began to assign to the original Five Elements system a metaphorical function, a function of explaining and accounting for meanings, and to identify or manifest qualities and essences. For example, in the Five Elements, the element of wood was assigned connections with the color black, the taste of sourness, the organ of the liver, the physiological quality of sinew or tendon, and the limb of talons. This was because it was conceived that the color black, the taste of sourness, the liver, the tendon, and the talon all possessed the nature, or quality, of wood