Jain Journal 1968 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 42

JAIN JOURNAL
of Jainism. The introduction of cosmology, as of other scientific themes, would be a delightful break.
3. Genesis of man's interest in cosmos
The story of how man became interested in cosmology is interesting. Man, as distinguished from all other developed animals with five sense organs, is a thinking and inquisitive animal. He finds himself on an earth inhabiting a landmass, surrounded by seas and blanketted by a gaseous atmosphere. During the day, the sun dominates his sky and at night appear the moon and millions of stars, visible as well as invisible, among which man's abode, the earth, along with a few other planets, wend their way. Imposed upon this regularity are the passing phenomena of clouds, rainfall, lightning, of shooting stars and occasional comets often viewed as herbinger of evils to come, and of the most frightful moments when the light from the sun, or the moon is partially or totally wiped out by the phenomenon of an eclipse. Faced with this confused multiplicity beyond his physical power to control, man seeks to master it symbolically by reducing it to order—by constructing a cosmology relating its parts with each other and with man himself, giving them the look of a conceptual whole. In this venture, of course, tools would vary between societies, ancient and modern, and so also the expressions. The ancient societies depended more on spiritual insight and expressed their findings in mythical language and in forms most familiar to common man and most appealing to common sense. The modern societies depend on visual observations aided by powerful telescopes and express their findings in abstract and complicated mathematics. Modern cosmology is, therefore, a subject for discussion amongst the experts only. It must, however, be noted that early views were not all emotions and hence a trash nor are all modern scientific views based on a full-proof secure foundation.
4. Cosmology and cosmogony : a distinction
At this point, a distinction may be drawn between cosmology and cosmogony. Cosmogony is a new branch of science that was developed by G. Lemaitre around the year 1927. It studies the evolutionary behaviour of the universe and enquires into the origin of its various characteristic features. While early cosmogonical theories were limited to the problem of the origin of our planetary system, modern cosmogony deals with the origin of the giant stellar galaxies, single and multiple stars, planetary systems in general and the origin of atoms of various chemical elements which constitute the universe. Cosmology in contrast