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10.
JAINISM AND MODERN SCIENCE
10.1 ANALOGIES
TO CALL JAINISM simply a religion is a misrepresentation since it tries to give a unified scientific basis for the whole cosmos including "living and non-living" entities. Thus, it is a holistic science which encompasses everything including religion. The main contributions of science in this era and their parallels with Jainism are as follows (Mardia, 1988b). In the discussion below, one should bear in mind that Jain Science is very much qualitative. However, Jain Science goes beyond Modern Science in many places, but only rarely do the two conflict.
(1) Particle physics and quantum theory. It is only in this century that technology has advanced to the point where atomic processes and elementary particles may be studied and understood in detail. However, it is interesting to note that Jains had formulated their ideas presumably one step further by evolving the concept of karmons. Whether such particles exist or not may be debatable, but it is interesting that they fit in well with a self-regulatory universe and the life in it.
Quantum theory is very much probabilistic. In some cases it is very near the probabilistic Jain principle of Conditional Predication (see Ch.9). This principle is partly a probabilistic principle connected with the reductionistic principle of science. Jain would complement this principle with the Holistic Principle (see Ch.9). At present, science is moving within these two principles. However, there are claims that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of soul (human consciousness): this turns out to be in conflict with quantum theory and with facts established by experiment (see, d'Espagnat, 1979). There are also attempts to bring the consciousness components into quantum theory models (see, Jahn, 1982). As a first introduction to the subject of quantum theory and reality, we refer the reader to Gamow (1965) and Gribbin (1984).
(2) Evolution. One of the greatest achievements of the biological science of the last century has been Darwin's theory of evolution It is interesting to note that through the density of karmic matter in
