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A SOURCË-BOOK IN JAINA PHILOSOPHY
valued logic and methodology which can solve many different problems of quantum physics and quantum mechanics. Similarly, eminent statisticians and biologists like Mehelnobis and J. B. S. Haldane have shown, the methodology of multi-valued logic as expressed in the syādvāda would be very useful in the study of theory of probability and the genetic evolution.
The metaphysical structure of Jainism is based in its formulation of the six-fold distinction of dravya like jiva, pudgala, dharma, adharma, ākāśa and kāla. We have already seen that the cosmic. principles of dharma and adharma and ākāśa and kala have been scientifically analysed like the Jainas. It is the special contribution of the Jainas in their analysis of the distinction of akāsa into lokākāśa and alokākāśa. Similarly, the Jainas have made a significant contribution to the theory of time by pointing out that time (kāla) is monodimensional and therefore is not an astikāya. Similarly, the Jaina theory of atomism has its own significant contribution in the analysis of the nature of atom. The Vaišeşikas distinguished between different types of atoms like the earth atoms, water and fire atoms, but the Jainas have not made qualitative atoms. That atoms can be distinguished in their combinations in forming the objects. The same atoms can form water or earth etc. Democrates comes nearer to the Jaina theory in this conception.
The Jainas have also made significant contribution in their analysis of the theory of knowledge and their doctrine of karma. Knowledge for the Jainas is self-illuminating. Pramānas were distinguished into pratyakşa and parokşa, but pratyakşu was that form of knowledge which the soul gets directly without the medium of sense-organs, they consider that sense-organs are impediments in the way of the soul for getting clear knowledge. Knowledge received through the sense-organs was considered to be parokşa, but later with a view to accommodating the use of other Indian philosophers and with a view to avoiding academic chaos in understanding the problems of epistemology, the Jainas adopted the phrase of nijapratyakşa, for the first and sārvyāvahārika prātyak sa for the knowledge arising out of the senseorgans and the contact of the mind.
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