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The Jaina perspectives of syadavada hold that a proposition is true only
conditionally and not absolutely. This is because it depends on the particular
standpoint, naya, from which it is being made; that logically a thing can be
perceived from at least seven different standpoints, saptabhangi-naya; which lead
us to the awareness of the many-sidedness of reality, or truth, anekanta-vada.
Realist Ethics
At no time were these limited to epistemological questions, of concern only to the
philosophers. Since human relationships, personal or social, are determined by
our perceptions of ourselves and of others, which we mostly assume also to be true
absolutely, giving rise to conflicts and violence because the others believe the
same about their judgments, the very first step towards living creatively is to
acknowledge the relativistic nature of our judgments, and hence their limits.
While being a distinct contribution to the development of Indian logic, the Jaina
syada-vada has been, most of all, a realist ethics of not-violence, ahimsa. The
two are inter-related intimately.
An article, 'Syada-vada, Relativity and Complementarity' by Prof. Partha Ghose, a
theoretical physicist says that P C Mahalanobis was the first to point out, in
1954, that "the Jaina Syada-vada provided the right logical framework for modern
statistical theory in a qualitative form, a framework missing in classical western
logic." J B S Haldane saw a wider relevance of syada-vada to modern science. And
Prof. Ghose speaks of the "most striking" similarity of syada-vada to Niels Bohr's
Principle of Complementarity, first noticed by D C Kothari. Furthermore, he says:
"The logic of Einstein's special theory of relativity is also very similar to
syada-vada."
In Einstein's relativity theory, Prof. Ghose points out, "the conventional
attributes of mass, length, energy and time lose their absolute significance";
whereas in Bohr's complementarity theory, "the conventional attributes of waves
and particles lose their absolute significance." As in syadavada, what that means
is that the physical value of the former is only relative to the theoretical
framework in which they are being viewed, and to the position from which they are
being viewed. None of them is a fixed, absolute truth about the physical universe,
as was assumed in the Newtonian physics. It would soon be discovered, too, that
they are relative also to the observer who observed them.
The upanishad-s and the Jaina syada-vada had argued that reality carries within
itself also opposites as its inherent attributes; and, therefore, no absolute
statements can be made about it. But no sooner was this said than it was shown
itself to be subject to the same limitation.
In the wake of the relativity theory, which had already shattered the classical
notions of physical order, de Broglie, a French prince, demonstrated, in 1924,
that an electron is both a particle and a wave, whereas quantum mechanics had held
the particle-wave duality. This discovery was even more upsetting, but
experimentally proved.
The most upsetting was the subsequent proof, provided by Werner Heisenberg in
1927, that no events, not even atomic events, can be described with any certainty;
whereas the natural sciences were rooted until then, and are so even now, in the
mistaken notion that scientific rationality and its method gave us exact and
certain knowledge of the universe. Heisenberg called it the 'Principle of
Uncertainty'. Its substance was not only that human knowledge is limited but also
that it is uncertain. That is to say, there are aspects of reality about which
nothing definite can be said - the avyaktam, or the 'indeterminate', of the Jaina
syada-vada.
Subsequent Proof
In his book The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, published
in 1979, Gary Zukay said: "The wave-particle duality marked the end of the
'either-or' way of looking at the world. Physicists no longer could accept the
preposition that light is either a particle or a wave because they had "proved" to
themselves that it was both, depending on how they looked at it."
Syada-vada, and with it anekanta-vada, had held that there are several different
ways of perceiving reality, each valid in its place, and none of them true
absolutely. But how do we judge the validity of our perceptions, by what criteria,
by what method? These are the main questions of epistemology. Since modem science
has been a method of perceiving reality, even if only physical reality, it is
epistemology with a certain method. Einstein had placed great emphasis upon that
fact; and he was one scientist of modern times who had placed also the greatest
emphasis upon the question of method in theoretical physics. His writings in that
regard are to be found in his Ideas and Opinions, published in 1954. He said:
"Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science
without epistemology is - insofar as it is thinkable at all - primitive and
muddled."
Limits of Logic
Concerning the method, as physics advanced, it became clear that the theoretical
element in scientific laws cannot be abstracted from empirical data, nor can it be
of pure logical induction. There is no bridge between the two of a kind that one
necessarily implied the other. According to Einstein, the "axiomatic basis of
theoretical physics cannot be abstracted from experience but must be freely
invented"; "experience may suggest the appropriate mathematical concepts, but they
most certainly cannot be deduced from it." Neither can pure logic give us
knowledge of the physical world. On this point also, Einstein was unambiguous.
"Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world", he
says; "all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.
Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards
reality." The passage from sense impressions to scientific theory, Einstein says,
is through "intuition and sympathetic understanding."
In brief, the two revolutions of relativity theory and quantum mechanics and what
followed, had rendered naive realism, pure empiricism, pure logical thinking, and
materialism, when each claimed to be the only way to knowledge and its certainty,
to be incompatible with scientific method. What had hitherto been assumed to be
the scientific method and, therefore, also the only true rationality, and was
sought to be imposed upon the rest of the world was, in its absoluteness,
discarded, And in all those movements of the New Physics, the Jaina syada-vada and
anekanta-vada are clearly manifest.
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