Anekāntavāda And Syādvāda: Metaphysical View Of Anekānta

Metaphysical View of Anekānta^[1]

The non-absolutist realism of the Jains neither endorses absolute eternalism nor absolute fluxism, but explains both these extremes as real with reference to different aspects of the same reality.

While dealing with the quantum field theory in the first chapter, we had seen that the paradox of wave-particle-duality of light could be explained by the concept of complementarity introduced by Niels Bohr (one of the founders of the quantum theory). This concept states that both the wave-aspect and the particle-aspect of light are necessary to fully understand the nature of light. Light or anything else cannot be both wave-like and particle-like in the same context.

This precisely is the Jain position with regard to any two opposites. Niels Bohr visited China in 1937 and was deeply impressed by ancient Chinese notion of the polar opposites. Some other physicists also visited Far Eastern countries and India and were no doubt deeply impressed by Vedānta, and Buddhist philosophies. In the following discussion, we shall see that the Jain theory of Non-absolutism (anekāntavāda) offers the best explanation of wave-particle paradox. Unfortunately, however, the eminent physicists could not contact the Jain scholars who could have shown to them the excellent merits of anekāntavāda. In the last fifteen years, a number of books on modern physics have revealed the most striking parallels between some schools