well, I think that's the point: it's a hermeutic of sorts: a dense, rich "text" subject to interpretation both in terms of it's parts and it's whole, which requires some notion of the historical/cultural context as well as the psychological dimension of the "authors"; the symbol illustrates a general principlewhich can, by necessity, be applied in many ways beyond what the "creators" may have had in mind - if life is change at it's core, if the processes of change act upon us temporally, morphologically, ontologically, etc., then you will have multiple levels of imagery: two fish swimming, a hurricane turning, sperm penetrating egg, electrons around nucleus, the course of the sun in a day, the seasons changing, etc.Originally Posted by TaiChiBob
as one interesting example of these processes in nature, check out Theodore Schwenk's book, "Sensitive Chaos" - it shows wonderful examples of vorteces, from rivers, to in utero development, to trabeculae in bone, to formation of shells, flights of birds, etc.; another good one is D'Arcy Thompson "On Growth and Form" for another comparative study in morphological developmet - although very mathematical at times, the point of these relatively western works is to show interellationships in nature that are all excellent examples of underlying yin/yang principles at work
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