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INTERJELIGIOUS DIALOGUE
A forum for academic, social, and timely issues affecting religious communities around the world.
An example of Shatavdhan is given which characterizes a small example of this process of evolution. In this state, a person's mental capabilities become extraordinary remarkable. This type of spiritual evolution is therefore compared with Darwin's principle of evolution. The differences are clearly brought out. Jains' principle of evolving towards a pure soul and acquiring a moksha is an idea very similar to the idea of a Goal discussed for irreversible systems under the General Systems Theory.
Limitations of physical sciences as they are applied to living systems: The Need to explore General Systems Theory for better understanding of Bioethics:
Actually scientific knowledge is based on compartmentalization, reductionism, and passivism (Goldsmith, 1990), ignoring openness and dynamism of the biological and human systems (Bertlanffy, 1976). Biological systems and human systems are essentially: (a) open systems compared to the physical systems which are closed; (b) they are also irreversible in nature (that is, they grow and decay); (c) here total system is more than the sum of the parts, that is a system is not reducible into parts; (d) such open systems are also goal directed systems where the effect determines the cause and not the other way around, which we find in scientific studies where cause determines the effect; (e) human systems also have memory, which makes them completely irreversible; and (f) due to thought processes, there can be infinite amplification in human systems, and it is very difficult to carry out any planned scientific experiments on them (Gigch, 1978).
Hence the problem becomes very complex when biological, human, and social systems come into the picture and the way they are being influenced by other human systems. To handle such complex issues, General Systems Theory (GST) should be explored for better understanding. GST takes some of the above factors into account and defines a new formalism where information/knowledge and order/entropy are more important than any other parameter. Even energy comes next to them, if required.
Actually the physical systems like physics, chemistry, and mathematics are called "hard systems," whereas social systems like sociology, biology, religion, political science, and economics are called "soft systems." Thus religion and science can be put together in this formalism.
Hence all the issues of Bioethics should be better analyzed using General Systems Theory, where compartmentalization is diluted and interaction is given higher priority.
Furthermore, the concept of development and evolution needs to be studied in terms of Entropy and Order. It is here that Jainism comes into the picture.
Limitations of scientific methodology due to conservations laws, when used to study biological systems Any phenomenon is called scientific if it can be verified in a laboratory under given set of controlled conditions and is reproducible at any point of time and at any place. This condition is
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