Jain Journal 1970 10

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

Page 28

OCTOBER, 1970
71
It would be interesting to compare briefly the modern conception of science with the ancient Jaina beliefs regarding the nature and propagation of radiations. Einstein has postulated that all forms of radiant energy--light, X-rays etc. actually travel through space in separate quanta. A puzzling phenomenon known as photo-electric effect is satisfactorily explained by Einstein only by supposing that all light is composed of individual particles or grains of energy which he calls ‘protons' and that when one of them hits an electron (e.g. when light falls on a sheet of metal) the resulting action is comparable to the impact of two billiard balls. Television and other application of the photo-electric effect owe their existence to Einstein's Photo-electric Law.
Einstein's notion that light, too, may consist of particles clashed with a far more venerable theory that light is made up of waves. More than two centuries of experiment and theory assert that light must consist of waves. Indeed, certain phenomena-diffraction and interference-involving shadows of thin objects are strictly wave characteristics and would not occur if light were made up of individual particles. Yet photo-electric law proved that light must consist of photons.
On the other hand, certain recent experiments proved that not only electrons but whole atoms and even molecules actually do exhibit wave characteristics. And so all the basic units (according to Science) of matter gradually shed their substance and were reduced to systems of superimposed waves. Thus all the matter is made of waves and we live in a world of waves. And so a beautiful paradox of strange dualism is presented by waves of matter on the one hand and particles of light on the other. Later, Heisenberg and Born developed equations which fit both the conceptions and Eddington has coined a new word "a universe of 'waveicles' ”.
But to the Jainas it was never a paradox. To them different kinds of radiant energies are only so many modes of pudgala. Light is material (and so is darkness). It therefore follows that shadows and images are also the results of interplay of matter. Particles and waves are but two aspects of the same quality. There is no strangeness about the dual character of light or any other form of matter. From the point of view of substance (dravya) the light must consist of photons, i.e., particles. From the point of view of mode (paryāya) it is constantly dynamiccontinuously changing and hence the wave-formations of crests and troughs and the resultant phenomena of interference and diffraction. And for all the radiations, their propogations and for the minutest vibrations there is dharmāstikāya (and of course adharmāstikāya too) as the medium.