Microcosmology Atom in Jain Philosophy and Modern Science

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 207

A Critique
189
etc., are as much real in a free paramānu as they are in an attached one. A free paramāņu when captured by an aggregate, loses its free state and is changed to become a component of the aggregate. Similarly its qualities also undergo changes of intensity. Thus the same paramāņu (as substance) which possessed one unit blackness can change to become infinitely black.
Two or more paramānus mutually combine together to produce composite bodies and the entire physical world is composed of paramānus. The aggregates composed by paramānus have shape and extension is space although the paramāņu itself is devoid of shape and has no extension. By this it is meant that single free paramānu does not occupy two or more space-points. The subatomic particles of modern science are presumed to be spherical in shape. Their diameters though very small are measurable and, therefore, their extension in space cover innumerable space points. This, according to Jains means that the subatomic particles of science viz., protons, electrons, etc., are not indivisible but composed of innumerable para mānus.
As stated above, theoretical considerations have already established that protons are made of quarks and the question 'what are the quarks made of ? looms large before the physicists. Thus, the subatomic particles are not the paramānus- the ultimate or primary atoms - but are infinitely more gross particles than a paramāņu.
QUALITIES AND MODES
Paramānu is eternal (nitya), indestructible (anaśvara), nontransmutable (avasthita), and indivisible (avibhājya). A paramāņu cannot be split or scattered or fissioned nor can it be composed or created by fusion.
When it was said that the word pudgala is derived from the properties of fission and fusion, it meant that the formation of material aggregates by the natural association of a number of paramānus is fusion and the splitting of aggregates into its components is fission. Paramāņu itself, though subject to mutation, is unfissionable and maintains its individual existence permanently.