Astronomy and Cosmology

Author(s): L C Jain
Publisher: Rajasthan Prakrit Bharti Sansthan Jaipur

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THE JAINA SCHOOL OF EXACT SCIENCES
PART II COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
“Give me to learn each secret cause;
Let Number's, Figure's, Motion's laws Reveal'd before me stand;
These to great Nature's scenes apply, And round the globe, and through the sky, Disclose her working hand.”
-Akenside, M. According to Lincoln, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." The Science awakening, round about the period of Vardhamana Mahāvīra and Gautama Buddha, was a simple rise against the inadequacy of the scientific knowledge which became indispensable according to the needs of the times, throughout the world.
One has to see with supreme clarity and certainty, whether during the hatching of a Science awakening, there has been a desperate attempt towards development of a scientific methodology. The methodology, usually, involves founding of general postulates or principles from which conclusions
ld be deduced. The principles are wormed out of nature by perceiving in comprehensive complexes of empirical facts and events ce features (say, cycles of births and deaths, regeneration and degeneration, evolution as well as devolution) which permit of precise formulation. Then may follow inference after inference revealing unforeseen relations, extending beyond the province of the reality from which one started the method out of pre-scientific thought.
Thus there has been awakening in framing the changes in concepts of the universe, the astral-universe being only an observable part of it. The