Foreknowledge Is Everything
What you cannot learn from spirits
Published July 8, 2026 · By Oriens
故明君賢將，所以動而勝人，成功出於眾者，先知也。先知者，不可取於鬼神，不可象於事，不可驗於度，必取於人，知敵之情者也。
What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer is foreknowledge. This foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from people who know the enemy situation.
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter 13, 故明君賢將，所以動而勝人，成功出於眾者，先知也。先知者，不可取於鬼神，不可象於事，不可驗於度，必取於人，知敵之情者也。
What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer is foreknowledge. This foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from people who know the enemy situation.
Information is the foundation of all strategy. Not guesses. Not analogies. Not superstition. Actual knowledge from people who know. Sun Tzu is remarkably modern here: he rejects divination, historical analogy, and abstract calculation in favor of human intelligence. The lesson is clear — if you do not have reliable information, you do not have a strategy. You have a hope.
Chapter 13, the final chapter, is devoted entirely to the use of spies. Sun Tzu categorizes five types: local spies (inhabitants), inward spies (enemy officials), converted spies (enemy spies turned), doomed spies (decoys), and surviving spies (those who bring back information). The sophistication of this taxonomy, written in an ancient interstate setting, is remarkable. Its core principle is that information is valuable only when obtained from people who can actually know the situation, not from supernatural or abstract certainty. The general who knows more than the enemy has already won half the battle. Chapter 13 rejects spirits and unsupported omens as sources of knowledge and says that reliable information comes through people who know the enemy's condition. The claim is practical rather than a rejection of every historical comparison: analogy may suggest a question, but it cannot substitute for current evidence. The text also assumes an intelligence system serving a state at war. A modern application is to ask who has first-hand knowledge, what they can actually observe, and how their interests shape their report. Expertise is valuable when its limits are visible. Human testimony is not infallible, but it is accountable in a way that omens are not. Ask what a source saw directly, what it inferred, and what would make it revise the report. The result is not omniscience; it is a more honest relationship with uncertainty.