Scientific Secrets of Jainism

Author(s): Nandighoshvijay
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scriptures Ahmedabad

Page 188

Is There An Origin Of Life?
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but no object can come from there to this earth. All animals human beings, insects are confined to their region, out of which they cannot go. Even if one goes by supernatural power or help of a god or goddess, one cannot survive there and if one survives there by virtue of some divine power, it is regarded to be very miraculous. (see: The Kalpasūtra, The origin of the Harivamśakula). In short the Jain philosophy also does not believe in any such theory as cosmozoic theory.
According to the Jain philosophy, the whole universe (all the fourteen Rājalokas) is inhabited by living beings. They take birth on this earth too.
Their bodies are constituted of the substances existing here. The body structure of some micro-organisms takes shape first and then the life-element /soul comes into it. But in macro-organisms, the soul comes first and it develops its body and organs according to its capacity.
There is another theory which is called the theory of spontaneous generation. According to it, the living world originated on the earth, all of a sudden, accidentally and in a very short time. No external factor was necessary. It was produced casually. The Greek philosophers believed that the living organisms were produced from sea-slimes under the influence of the Sun, heat and atmosphere. Scientists accepted this belief of the Greek philosophers. But they did not accept the reasons that the Greek philosophers gave for creation of the living world. Down to the sixteenth century, some
believed that frogs were produced in the mud of water, scorpions were produced in the excretion of animals and rats, house-flies and earth worms were produced from soil or clay. But some experiments were made to know whether this was true or not. One such experiment was performed by the Italian physicist Francesco Redi and he proved that the theory of spontaneous generation was wrong. He showed that the maggots are produced only from eggs laid on rotten meat and fishes. When meat and fishes are kept in a closed glass vessel and kept away from house-flies, maggots did not develop in it. Ultimately he concluded that life originates from life and non-living beings can never give birth to life. This theory is called biogenesis. Later on Louis Pasteur went still further and proved that very minute microorganisms can be produced from other germs of a kindred kind. Thus Redi and Pasteur proved that living organisms were not produced in surroundings similar to the present day surroundings. The question arises here whether it