Nandanvana

Author(s): N L Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 74

Chapter - 5
SOME THOUGHTS ON CHANGES IN ORDER OF SOME JAINA CHAINS OF CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES
Karl Sagan' has stated that the ancient religious concepts or beliefs have a tendency to resist intellectualism. This is illustrated by the penalisation of eminent scientists and philosophers like Galileo, Spinoza and White etc. It is further seen that many ancient religious beliefs have been helpful only in status-quoism of the social, political and economic systems. The religious systems are never called progressive and living ones, which are not sensitive towards changes in the above or other areas. In contrast, those religious systems are better long-lived and living ones, which are genuine towards intellectual and scientific analysis. This point applies to the Jaina system, which is going to be better, enlivened in this century.
The Jaina system is an atheistic system. It should not, therefore, be a surprise if it is scientific providing rational understanding of nature and serving as a catalytic force in letting our knowledge as research-oriented, ordered, progressive and accurate as for as possible. It states an entity to be studied with respect to its substantivity, location, time and mode. The latter three factors are ever-changing and our knowledge about it will also follow suit. It will always be flowing like a river. As pointed out in T.S. 1.15°, the Jainas have stated a tetrad of steps of acquire knowledge through (1) Apprehension (visual or intuitional preliminary operations), (2) Speculation (more observation and partial analysis), (3) Perceptual judgement (by intellectual analysis) and (4) Inference, theorization and record. This is similar to the process of gaining the scientific knowledge through the tetradic steps of experiment, observation, analysis and inference followed by hypothesization.