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PRAVACANASĀRA, The religious dogma of a Syādvādin goes a step further and accepts an. omniscient being; but Sir Oliver Lodge says, 'How Gcd perecives it, or what it is in ultimate reality, we do not know'.?
SYĀDVĀDA AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY.-The aim of Syādvāda happily I corresponds with the scope of philosophy in modern thought. Syādvāda aims
to unify, coördinate, harmonise and synthesise the individual view-points into í 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
ne, is taking a new
aims now to constructively the conclusions, of various branches of knowledge like special sciences with a view to explain the riddle of the universe. Experiniental 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 por 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". 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 Syádvāda, Joad says, "Philosophyconsists, 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 experiment
1 Sir Oliver Lodge: Relativity p. 39 etc. 2 J. F. Wolfendon: The Approach to Philosophy, p. 27 etc.; also Joad's Counter Attack
frors the East pp. 95 etc. 3 For philosophy, substitute Syädvāda and for conceptions,of philosophers various Nayasi
and the comparative position is the same.
