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Pravacanasára
coördinate, harmonise and synthesise the individual view-points into a practicable whole; or 'in the Syādvāda' as Prof. Dhruva puts it 'discordant notes are blended so as to make a perfect harmony'. With the advance of specialisation of different branches of knowledge like psychology, metaphysics, theology, epistemology etc. the considerable size and importance of what philosophy once meant are being gradually reduced with a very happy result that philosophy, too, with the time, is taking a new grab; it aims now to unify constructively the conclusions of various branches of knowledge like special sciences with a view to explain the riddle of the universe. Experimental sciences start with certain assumptions like the causal principle etc., but philosophy examines these hypotheses in an abstract manner. Special sciences deal "with some specially selected aspect of the general world, and its conclusions apply to that special aspect alone. Any characteristics which a thing may possess in any other relations or for other purposes are irrelevent. To the psychologist people are their actions; to the physiologist they are more or less efficient organisms; to the chemist they are various collections of elements; to the physicist they are forces in motion. These same people may also be good husbands or good squash racket players, but these aspects of their whole personality are at the moment irrelevent. They may become relevent when the statistician enquires into these sides of their natures".1 Philosophy harmonises all these by examining their assumptions, and in its ideal aspect it aims to find 'one concrete categorical fact expressible in conceptual form'. As to the aim of philosophy, with which I have just compared Syādvāda, Joad says, “Philosophy2 consists, in fact, of continual pooling and sifting of the conceptions of philosophers. The more diverse the conceptions, the richer the material to be sifted. None is to be rejected, because, while none is true, none is wholly false". This attitude will surely cultivate tolerance in the earnest struggle for the search of Truth. This sense of relativity of truth is also visible in the methods of scientific research. Aspects or Nayas are after all aspects, however exhaustively they are enumerated. True knowledge, which philosophy aims at, is the knowledge of a whole, a culminating synthesis after every avenue of analysis is exhausted. The function of Nayavāda in Jainism is almost the same, so far as the underlying idea is concerned, as that of various special sciences; just as Syādvāda harmonises various Nayas, so modern philosophy aims to harmonise the conclusions of different experimental (p. 91:] sciences. Nayas simply analyse and take to bits only a particular aspect, so a process of synthetic expression like Syādvāda is necessary to convey the nature of reality. 3
EVALUATION OF SYĀDVĀDA.-As Prof. Chakravarti puts it, Syādvāda has steered clear of the shallow realism of Cārvākas and the ludicrous idealism of
1 J. F. Wolfenden: The Approach to Philosophy, p. 27 etc.; also Joad's Counter Attack from
the East pp. 95 etc. 2 For philosophy, substitute Syādvāda and for conceptions of philosophers various Nayas:
and the comparative position is the same. 3 The exact chronological relation between Nayavāda and Syādväda, the grouping of seven
or six Nayas under Dravyārthika and Paryāyārthika, the coordination or identification of these two Nayas with Niscaya and Vyavahāra: these are points which need further study on strictly historical and philological lines.
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