The DHARMA Initiative symbol is based on the Ba-Gua, a wheel determining “alignments” in Feng-Shui, with its origins in the I Ching & Taoist thought. Though it was and is used primarily for geomancy, it has deep roots in mathematics & the true sciences, much as astronomy is a pseudoscience for the superstitious, but has its roots in astronomy. Note that the center contains the well-known yin-yang symbol, which in our DI symbol is divided by the swan neck. At the roots of Taoism, Buddhism & other East Asian faiths is the idea of mutually opposing things existing in balance—dualism. The relation of these faiths to LOST is nothing new—the number 108 is a sacred number to Buddhists.
The symbols surrounding are trigrams of kwae, composed of an undivided dash (yang) or a divided one (yin).
