New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

Page 153

Contribution of Jainism to Indian Logic 145
second principle is that energy passed through an instrument loses its quality which gradually decreases. It has not been possible to invent an instrument, therefore, which is capable of changing energy into motion that is perpetual and does not consume the quantity of the initial energy. It has been presumed by some thinkers that, although it is not possible to preserve the quantity of energy intact in this space and time, yet it may be possible to do so in a different space and time so that an instrument supplied with a quantum of energy would ever remain in motion without involving any decrease in the initial energy. From such instances or scientific discoveries and inventions it is evident that the concomitances valid in a particular space and time are not applicable universally in a different space-time context. The concomitances are, therefore, to be determined on the basis of the principle of relativism'.
Many a theory of statistics and physics has found an adequate exposition in the light of relativism.
The second important outcome of syadvada (the doctrine of conditional dialectic) is synthesis. The Jaina sages and saints have not accepted the exclusive validity of impermanence etc. given in experience, but attempted to discover their coherence with their opposites, such as permanence and the like. The philosophical doctrines have a cyclic fate due to reasoning (tarka). By one set of reasoning it is confirmed that a real is impermanent because it is a product and whatever is a product is impermanent, for instance, a jar. In another set of reasoning, on the other hand, it is established that the sound is permanent because it is not a product. What is not a product is permanent, for instance, the space. One can search for a synthesis between these two mutually opposed sets of reasoning. Opposition leads to synthesis. The proposition 'sound is impermanent', is true because it becomes an entity of the past immediately after becoming the object of the ear. It is not illogical to accept a sound as impermanent on account of this change. The Mimämsaka philosophier's characterisation of 'sphota', which is the material cause (upādāna kāraṇa) of the sound as eternal is also not unreasonable. The material bodies that transform into sound do never change their material character, and in this sense their permanence should also be acceptable. No attribute of a real, according to relativism, is independently true. The attributes can be true only as inter-related. Acarya Sāyaṇa Madhava of 14th century A.D., in his Sarvadarśanasamgraha, has refuted one system of philosophy by another in order finally to establish the ultimate