Laozi 11 and 14: the void that is used, and the triad that cannot be examined

Companion source

Source: Chinese Wikisource, 道德經 (王弼本) and 老子 (帛書校勘版); local verbatim excerpt .txt; retrieved and collated 2026-09-18. Metadata: the received Laozi is a layered compilation, strata conventionally 4th–3rd century BCE. The Mawangdui silk manuscripts come from a tomb sealed in 168 BCE and are the earliest witness consulted here. The Guodian bamboo slips, c. 300 BCE, carry only part of the received text and were not consulted, so whether either chapter is attested that early is open in this file. Extraction: both chapters copied from each recension, with Wang Bi’s commentary omitted. Rights: ancient text, public domain; Wikisource contributions CC BY-SA.

What it supplies, and what it does not

Two passages that a reader of this collection will want compared with Greek atomism, recorded here so the comparison can be settled instead of repeated.

Chapter 11, the useful void. Thirty spokes share one hub, and 當其無, 有車之用, in its nothing lies the cart’s usefulness; likewise the vessel and the room, closing with 故有之以為利, 無之以為用 — what-is provides the benefit, what-is-not provides the use. This is a fourth ancient answer to the question of what emptiness does, beside three the collection already holds. For the Greek atomists the void is what permits motion; for Vasubandhu the existence of gaps between atoms would leave motion through them unobstructed, which is an objection rather than a licence; for Umāsvāti a positive substance does the permitting and space merely accommodates. Here the void is neither a permitter nor an obstacle but the seat of function.

Chapter 14, the triad. Looked at and not seen, call it yí; listened to and not heard, call it xī; grasped at and not got, call it wēi; 此三者不 可致詰, 故混而為一, these three cannot be interrogated further, so they merge and become one. The structural resemblance to Democritus’s three differentiae — rhysmós, diathigḗ, tropḗ, reported by Aristotle at Metaphysics A.4 985b as shape, arrangement and position — is a triad of irreducible differentiae resolving into one, and the two are roughly contemporaneous.

The evidence here weighs against a term-by-term correspondence. The two recensions swap two of the three names:

The middle term is stable and the outer two are transposed, so the specific words were not stably tied to the modalities within the Chinese transmission itself. Two further differences bear on it. Democritus’s three are properties of atoms that generate phenomenal difference; these three are sensory failures that deny phenomenal access. And Democritus’s three are not indexed to sense modalities at all, whereas the indexing is the whole form here. The honest label is convergence of form, with no transmission route shown, and what would change it is a text placing the Greek triad in a Chinese context or the reverse, which this file does not have.

Passage anchors

Mawangdui writes 卅 for 三十, 亓 for 其, 无 for 無, 捪 for 搏, and 不可至計 for 不可致詰.

Coverage and limits

Reading level passage for the two chapters in both recensions; metadata for the rest of the work. Wang Bi’s commentary is present in the source page and deliberately not stored. The Guodian slips, the Heshang Gong commentary and the Beida Han slips are not covered, and the first of those is what a dating argument would need.