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AFTER CERTAINTY

Person

David N. Keightley

Historian of Shang China using oracle bones as sources for early kingship and divination.

Why this matters

Keightley shows certainty sought through ritual inquiry—authority consulting the bone.

Focus in observatory

Works

book

Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone

Keightley, David N. *Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China*. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

Related books

Book

Before Certainty Arrives

How Moral Order Forms, Hardens, and Outlives Its Reasons

How moral order forms, hardens, and outlives its reasons—before certainty feels like the only available posture.