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JAIN MATHEMATICS AND KARMAVAD/151
to achieve temperatures as low as 3-4 °K. But then, how to explain 0°K? Entity ceases to exist at that instant. 0°K is thus treated as absolute zero and there is a clear conception in the field of science that this temperature (heat) is only notional and not real. At absolute zero, no properties have any relevance in physics.
Another example from the world of science is the properties of a photon - (i) Photon is treated as a bundle of energy with zero-mass (massless)
at rest. (ii) Photons travel at the speed of light and acquire mass which cannot
be measured due to its motion.
Once again, the scientists say that the absolute zero mass is only notional and even at rest it only tends to become zero. These two examples establish a close analogy between science and Jainism.
Many scholars have regarded zero to designate the absence, as this does not come under the provisions mathematics, hence its description is not given here.
Number System
Quantitatively, numbers are classified in three main categories depending on their countability - numerate, innumerate and infinite. These are further divided in three sub-categories - Minimum, Medium and Maximum. Amongst these nine categories, only eight were adopted by the mathematicians and the last subcategory of maximal infinity is discarded on similar grounds upon which the zero was discarded. Their further subclasses are twenty, which are as follows -
There are three classes of the numerates - (1) Minimum (minimal)
(2) Medium, intermediate, middle or intervening (3) Maximum (maximal)
There are nine types of the innumerate -
(1) Minimal lowest innumerate,
(2) medium lowest innumerate,
(3) maximal lowest innumerate,
(4) minimal average innumerate,
(5) medium average innumerate.
(6) maximal average innumerate,
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