JAINA Convention 1993 07 Pittusburgh

Author(s): Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA

Page 57

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Some of the latest concepts
in Modern Physics
Examined in the light of
JAINISM
by Ramnik V. Shah (Vividus)
that of a single, continuous, undivided or even indivisible universe. At the beginning of Modern Physics stands the extraordinary intellectual feat of one man, Albert Einstein. He initiated two revolutionary trends in 1905, relativity and electromagnetic radiation which shattered the foundation of the worldview held by the scientists till then. A new reality came into existence and it changed the concepts of space, time, matter, object, cause and effect. The Universe is now, now longer seen as a machine made of a multitude of separate objects but is seen as one indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated, understandable only as patterns of a cosmic process. As one scientist has put it, "isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other system. Sub-atomic particles are not things but are interconnections between other things and so on." In Quantum Theory you never end up with things, you always deal with inter-connections. This is how Modern Physics reveals the basic oneness of the Universe.
For the last nearly five hundred Kyears, since the sun of Science first rose
on the horizon, the Universe was considmed to have been containing within itself innumerable separate parts. Since Keplar, Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and the Descartes came on the Jacene, Science took into account only the quantitative values of these parts but totally ignored their qualitative ones. All Iwere seen in three dimensions of length, breadth and height or depth, while the jest of the other multi-dimensions such s time, texture, smell, shape, sound retc., were totally overlooked.
It was Galileo who first directed the acientists' attention to the quantifiable properties of matter. This has taken heavy toll at the end of five hundred years. Out have gone sight, smell, pound, shape, touch and taste, aesthetics and ethical stability such as values, qualities, forms, feelings, motives, sentations, intentions, souls, consciousness and spirit. Experience as such has been Last out of the realm of scientific discover and only measurement and quantiacation have remained scientists' obsession for the last over four hundred years.
Only in this century since Albert Pinstein came on the scene with his theIries of special relativity, general rela
vity, quantum mechanics, the unified Meld encompassing both gravitational And electromagnetic forces and fourimensional space-time continuum, the view of the universe has changed into
tainty, we can only predict the likelihood of its happening.
In recent years physicists have had to address the interplay of consciousness with the physical world. The experimental findings that flow from quantum physics are staggering. They force us to accept that the stuff of the world is mind-stuff and that there is a profound interaction between conscious mental activity and the physical world itself. They also say that when searching for harmony in life, we must never forget that in a drama of existence, we are ourselves both actors and spectators acting on and having sight of the objective world. (Niel Bohr). As distinct from some philosophies, Jainism argues that we are not only spectators but also actors and even experiencers.
Science today in its Relativity Theory lays down that all space and time measurements are relative. As time is added to the three space co-ordinates as a fourth dimension, space and time can no longer be separated because space to one observer will be a mixture of space and time to another. Both are intimately and inseparably connected and form a four-dimensional continuum called space-time. Space and time are two concepts which have seemed entirely different but have been now unified in relativistic physics by going to a higher dimension, the four-dimensional spacetime. The four dimensional world of relativistic physics is the world where force and matter are unified, where matter can appear as discontinuous particles or as a continuous field. Space is not three-dimensional and time is not a separate entity. New or Modern Physics never talks about space without talking about time and vice versa.
The projection of three-dimensional points on to a two-dimensional plane makes the length of an object different for different angles of projection. Similarly, the length of a moving object by the projection of its points in fourdimensional space-time is different in
The sub-atomic particles via electrons, protons, neutrons in the nucleus of atoms are nothing like solid objects of classical physics. They are units of mat- ter, but very abstract entities have a dual aspect appearing sometimes as waves and sometimes as particles. At the subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty at definite places but rather shows tendencies to exist and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways but rather show tendencies to occur. We can never predict an atomic event with cer
MSME
"Educate the children in their infancy in such a way that they
become exceedingly kind and merciful to the animals."
O
.
: OILS
-Abdul Baha, Bahai 7TH BIENNIAL JAINA CONVENTION - JULY 1993
Jain Education Intemational