Book Title: Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture
Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
________________
348 Anekāntavāda and Syādvāda
event an exclusive place in its series. For it may seem that a fact or an event has a unique place within a single unique order or that it has a particular character or quality, yet that fact can never be so considered and its 'nature becomes general and ceases forthwith to be what we mean by particular'' Joachim too confirms this view when he says : "No judgment is ever entirely severed from a larger background of meaning, though the background may be relatively obscure' 10
In this respect Bradley considers the absolute view of “perfect truth and sheer error' as arising out of the wrong conception of the nature of things that 'separate facts and truths are self-contained and possess independent reality'.11 And even if we refer to the “mathematical truths' or 'universal judzinents of science, similar difficulty is experienced, though they seem to express ‘necessary connection of content'. For instance, when it is asserted that 2+2=4, it
ant that the addition of such units as two and two must necessarily be four; and similarly 'Hydrogen is lighter than air' seems to give an absolute meaning regarding the truth of this fact. It is true, Bradley suggests, that “mathematical Truths' as well as truths concerning the universal judgments of science' are based upon
in conditions and under those conditions the results which follow acquire meaning suggestive of pure truth and utter falsehood. But when we have passed beyond the world of “special science' and have referred our judgment to things beyond what is there, which influence the function of life and finally limit our vision that we are ultimately compelled to reject the absolute view regarding truth. For, in scientific thinking, what is needed is the elimination of all irrelevant matters from the contents of judgments to make them thoroughly complete and consistent so as to give a meaning which may be wholly true. But this way of judging is based entirely on the abstraction of fact and event from all else, and this necessitates our thinking to remain confined to simple entities presented to us without any consideration of the context. But "such a background is focussed and concentrated, more or less, in every judgment which one makes, or again in every judgment which one accepts from another person”. 12 In this respect, the meaning of any judgment is dependent 8. Bradley, F.H.--Essays on Truth & Reality, Oxford 1962, p. 262. 9. Ibid, p. 261 10. The Nature of Truth Oxford, 1939, p. 113. 11. Blansdshard, B.-The Nature of Thought, Vol. II, Allen & Unwin, 1964 p. 319.
