Summary
Shi (勢) is a classical Chinese term for the tendency built into an arrangement of things: what a situation is inclined to do because of how it is set up. Its best-known source is Sunzi’s ‘Art of War’, whose chapter on it (‘Energy’ in Lionel Giles’s 1910 translation) likens a well-placed army to “the momentum of a round stone rolled down a mountain”. Skill lies in the positioning, not in pushing harder.
The French sinologist François Jullien brought the idea to Western readers in ‘The Propensity of Things’ (French 1992, English 1995). Shi’s home is war and statecraft, and Jullien’s account has critics; it is one reading, not ‘the Chinese view’.
Rationale
Part 1 wants us to understand “how a culture or system is disposed – where the energy is”: close to reading shi. The caveat is its home in war; Part 2 distrusts strategy’s “military origins”.