Some Jain Concepts and Conduct

Author(s): Sushma Singhvi
Publisher: B J Institute

Page 18

Anekāntavāda : Origin and Development]
17
has two space point. Similarly the simultaneous predication of three attributes is only possible in the case of triad which has three space points. The implication of above description is that the joint predication of two contradictory attributes to the same space points is purely a case of 'indescribability' and not an illustration of a dual predication of self and not-self. The dual predication is meaningful only if the object has two parts in order that each individual attribute may find its own accommodation. The later Jain philosophers, however, did not find any difficulty in such predication, and they made the dual predication (‘is' and ‘is not’used by them in place of 'self' and 'not-self') irrespective of the non composite or composite character of the object. Some of them also interchanged the positions of the third and fourth attributes.
Bhagavati Sätra has given us a clue to the fact that the behaviour of monad or atom and dyad etc. and molecule or particle is absolutely different. Dr. D.S.Kothari has also stated this fact in his article “Modern Physics and Syādvāda’26. Explaining complimentarity principle in syādvāda he quotes Bohr's concept of modern physics and stresses upon the very close nature of complimentarity and syādvāda. Modern physics has warned us against the dangers of overestimating the value and utility of precise scientific concepts: for example, the fundamental concepts of classical physics no longer hold in quantum mechanics. It was some two thousand years after Euclid that non-Euclidean geometry was discovered in the nineteenth century.
A favourite maxim of Bohr of interest in connection with syādvāda is the distinction between the two kinds of truths, profound truths and trivial truths. For a profound truth its opposite or negation is also a profound truth. For a trivial truth its opposite is false, an absurdity. “The truth of a statement of the highest wisdom is not absolute, but is only relative to a suitable meaning