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THE SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS OF JAINISM
combined through, for example, the repeated use of the syllogism. Consider first the following example. There are six blind men who want to know what kind of object an elephant is. Each touches a different part of the elephant (see Fig. 9.2). The one who touches a leg says “It is a pillar”, the one who touches the trunk says “It is a pipe”, the one who touches an ear says “This is a winnowing fan”, and so on. Thus, each opinion differs. Hence, if we wish to understand what kind of object the elephant is, we must look at it from all sides.
This illustrates the Jain Holistic Principle (Anekantavada). We now apply it to a real example. Consider the following conditiona! predicates.
(1) Earth may be round. (2) Earth may not be round. (3) Earth may, or may not, be round. (4) Earth may be of indeterminate shape.
5) Earth may be round or may be of indeterminate shape. (6) Earth may not be round or may be of indeterminate shape. (7) Earth may or may not be round, or may be of indeterminate
shape.
We reach the conclusion that the Earth is round from a global stand-point but is not round from a local stand-point. A similar conclusion may be reached about Mars and Venus. Therefore, the same may be true for all the planets.
Applying the syllogism to a new planet which has these same properties, we may conclude that this planet is round from a global stand-point but is not round from a local stand-point.
Thus we come to the Conditional (non-absolute) Holistic Principle. The Conditional Predications applied to each entity are beads which are held together by the Holistic Principle behaving like a thread.
9.5 DISCUSSIONS
Here we have discussed only a small fraction of Jain logic and philosophy. Note that the holistic (manifold) aspect is the key to the system and is usually applied to ontological questions. Each existent is composed of three aspects: substance, quality and mode. Also, for each unilateral aspect, four factors are important to each situation; the specific “object", its specific location, its specific time and its specific state. The Holistic Principle attempts to view the existents from these multimodal aspects. In practice this principle implies that
