The Chi Argument

While one can argue endlessly (and many people do) over the existence and capabilities of Chi in the martial arts, the existence/non-existence poses no useful information to the study of martial applications.

If Chi exists and it is useful in the Martial Arts (or anything else) than it will have effects. If it has no effects, no one should care about it. After all, there could be thousands of fluids, demons, ghosts, aliens all around and in us, but if they have no effects, what does it matter? Anyone arguing that Chi exists will probably believe and argue that it has effects.

So if Chi exists and it has effects, what are these effects? These effects could probably be classified into 2 categories. The first category would be random effects while the second category would be predictable effects. Anyone would probably agree that random effects are pretty useless. The only reason to care about random effects would be to attempt to predict them and prove that they are actually not random so that they might actually become useful (or be avoided).

Here again I am going to assume that anyone arguing for the existence of Chi probably believes that it has non random effects although they might believe that understanding the pattern or how to generate these effects might be fairly unknown or secret.

So if Chi can be used to cause repeatable effects, these effects could be useful. These effects could be studied, but they would be fairly useless without understanding what causes them to occur, what triggers them? While Chi could be a mechanism by which effects are produced, the existence of Chi alone cannot be a cause/trigger for effects, or else, we are back to random and useless effects.

Once we acknowledge that we need to understand cause and effect, the question becomes, why would we even care about Chi unless it provides some clue as to predictable causation? Well, we probably shouldn't! If we have causes which we can study, and effects, we might as well ignore Chi all together, any middle medium is irrelevant (at least until causes and effects are well understood). The scientific study of martial arts has no need for what most people call Chi, whether it exists or not. Concern need only be given to things that are repeatable and to their causes and effects.

The Utility of Chi in a Conversation

Chi/Ki is obviously discussed in most martial circles and therefore cannot really be ignored. When a person brings up Chi, try to figure out what principle they are trying to convey or describe; ask them to describe what they mean without using Chi. There are many people who use Chi as a metaphysical idea, because they want mystery. But many others use it to simply describe something that they feel is intuitive or real, but that they do not know how to describe any other way. Dealing with this case can be very enlightening and instructive, it may help illuminate where understanding of principals, repeatable processes and vocabulary is lacking.

This wiki attempts to replace the use of Chi in many of those conversations with better more accurate terminology. With that in mind, the discussion of Chi should probably be encouraged. The reason it should be encouraged is because of the benefits of capturing, categorizing and describing those discussions scientifically. It should be possible to take advantage of the physics, physiological, and psychological knowledge encumbered with the term Chi, and make it more understandable and usable by better describing this knowledge.

Some of the things people probably mean when they talk about Chi:

• Focus, intent
• Structural alignment
• Momentum
• Flowing motions such as oscillations or wave motion
• Potential energy such as rising/falling or elasticity
• Breathing calmly and efficiently
• Mental calmness
• Move telegraphing/predicting, intention reading
• Mind control (brain washing,) parlor tricks

These things are all very different and it is a shame to use the word Chi to describe them since the term is so ambiguous. If repeated impression of others is one's objective, ambiguity may be a good tool. However ambiguity is not likely to help those who want to improve by learning from those who can perform, it will at best prolong their mystification, or at worse destroy their interest.

The road to demystifying something starts by observing and describing it, let's do that here on this wiki.