Jainism: The Eternal and Universal Path for Enlightenment: 07.1 Jainism and Modern Physics (1)

Before the universe, there was Dharma (laws)
There is nothing universal except the laws of physics.
Nothing is absolute, neither time, nor space.
Everything depends on the frame of reference.

Scientific basis of Jainism,
Nature of matter,
Science Sūtras,
Jainism and modern physics

Science is truly universal, based on certain laws which are non-subjective, applicable everywhere, at all times and acceptable to all. We began this book by claiming that Jainism is also universal, based on some eternal laws which are non-subjective and in this respect appears to be quite scientific in its approach. It may therefore be appropriate to look for some common ground between science and Jainism. The purpose of this chapter is to critically examine if such a common ground exists.

Jainism divides the universe in two independent entities, jiva and ajiva, the latter being the subject matter of science. The true nature of both Jiva and Ajiva is multifacedness, with infinite attributes, correctly described by Anekāntavād, in contextual relation (Syādvād) and can be expressed in seven folded mode of saptbhangi. These laws are mentioned in various Jain scriptures (e.g. Bhagvati Sūtra) but the physical concepts are best summarised in Tattvārtha Sūtra of Umaswati, written some 1800 years ago. In particular, Chapter 5 of Tattvārtha Sūtra is devoted to physics. We resort to this book for comparing science with Jainism.

As far as physical universe is concerned, science asserts that it is governed by certain laws. Science recognizes matter (energy and matter are inter-convertible), three types of forces (gravitation, electroweak (which includes electricity, magnetism and weak nuclear forces) and strong nuclear forces) and fields, space-time as the elements constituting the physical universe. It is possible that all the forces, both attractive and repulsive, may be manifestation of a single force, but they have not yet been integrated in one as electricity, magnetism and weak nuclear forces, earlier considered to be independent, were integrated in one electroweak force. Thus the physical universe, as we understand it now, is made of four components: space, matter (and energy), force fields and time. In comparison, Jainism states that the material universe is composed of five components: space, matter, Dharmastikaya, Adharmastikaya and time. Thus there is agreement between science and Jainism on the three constituents of the Universe i.e. matter, space and time. Physics has already shown that there is nothing like medium of motion (earlier postulated as all-pervading aether i.e. considered to be equivalent of Dharmastikāya by some scholars) by the experiments conducted by Michelson and Morley and we do not have the faintest idea of what Adharmastikāya (medium of rest) could be. This may be a subject of further investigation.

Science has made tremendous progress in the last four hundred years and the behaviour of matter is well understood. Physics has divided matter in two parts, the macro and the micro, where respectively classical physics and quantum physics are applicable. To appreciate this natural division into macro and micro, it may be desirable to briefly go through the historical developments leading to quantum physics and describe the important concepts and basic principles of physics.

Science view of macro and the micro world

Fig. 7.1. Macro to the micro universe showing the sequence from the gross to the subtle components of nature. Sixty Elementary Particles (Quarks, Leptons and the Force carriers, together with their antiparticles), known to be the building blocks of matter are arranged in the box on lower right according to their attributes.

The universe is made up of matter which range in size from the smallest invisible entities to the biggest unfathomable entities. The smallest entity known at present are quarks although search for even smaller entities is continuing. The biggest is of course the universe, by definition, but currently scientists are talking of multiverses, which is actually a group of universes. Astronomical observations suggest that our Universe was formed some 14 billion years ago in Big Bang. It consists of over 200 billion galaxies, each of which consists of more than 100 billion stars and even more planetary (rocky) objects (Figure 7.1). All the matter in the Universe is made up of several thousands of chemical compounds, several hundreds of minerals and over a hundred elementary particles. The visible universe with all its diverse components is basically made up of some 118 elements (92 stable and long lived radioactive elements and about 26 short lived elements, synthesized by nuclear reactions in stars, but not naturally occurring on Earth now). The vast tree representing diversity of matter and life in the universe formed out of just a hundred odd elements, acting as the basic bricks compelled philosophers to hypothesise that the root cause of all the elements may be some smaller number of elementary particles, may be even just one. This principle was at the heart of Dalton's atomic theory. The initial search for these building blocks of matter were encouraging and was even taken to support this idea of one basic constituent of all matter and hydrogen was recognized as the atom out of which all the known elements could be formed. As the search for the ultimate constituents of matter continued, three particles, proton, electron and neutron were discovered from which all the 118 elements and their 2000 isotopes could be formed. This trinity could be used in different proportions to build the whole physical universe. This strengthened the belief in Ekantavad, i.e. one can give rise to many but as further research continued, serious problems arose. By the nineteen sixties, using large high energy accelerators, scientists were able to discover hundreds of elementary particles. Such large number of elementary particles could not be the building blocks for making just a hundred elements and therefore it was postulated that the so called elementary particles should be made up of only a few fundamental entities.

The visible universe (minerals, rocks, planets, stars galaxies etc. or the gross world) follows the classical physics. Basically, the state of the gross universe can be determined by summing up the state of all its components. If mass (m), velocity (v) and position (x) of all the components are known, the state of the system can be determined by the proposition that the whole is the sum of parts.

Whole = Ʃ (m,v,x)_parts

There are only few attributes of the objects of the physical world: mass (and energy) and form (shape), which also change with time. The origin of mass is still not understood. Ernst Mach made an attempt to explain it by what is known after him as Mach's Principle. Broadly speaking Mach's principle states that the inertial mass of a body is solely due to interaction of other bodies in the universe. Heller mentions it in the following way "The local inertial frames are entirely determined by the distribution and motion of all matter present in the universe" and Einstein formulated it as "the entire inertia of a point mass is the effect of the presence of all other masses, deriving from a kind of interaction from the latter" There is yet no "proof" for this principle but Einstein is said to have derived much inspiration from the Mach's principle in development of his Theory of Relativity.

As we go to the level of molecules and elementary particles, the classical physics fails to hold and quantum physics has to be invoked and some new principles come into play. Thus there is a division between physical laws of classical physics, applicable to the gross universe, roughly bigger than an atom, and the quantum physics applicable to the subtle world, consisting of elementary particles and the micro universe. In classical physics, a proposition that " a particle is at position x" is either true or false. In contrast, in quantum physics, the best that can be said is that if a measurement of position is made, the probability that the particle will be at a position x would lie between 0 to 1. Most concepts of common sense are not valid in quantum world.
More importantly, quantum world is not just a classical, mechanical, Newtonian world where processes follow the law of mechanics but it showed that there are qualities which are influenced by observation. There is something like behaviour of particles which can change under observation. This is the first step towards understanding the interaction between jiva and ajiva.

Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics puts severe constraints on certainty of our knowledge. Two tenets of quantum mechanics that are relevant here can be crudely described as follows. One is that the universe does not exist if you don't observe it, equivalent to the paradox of the Schrödinger's cat (for popular exposition, see e.g. Gribbin, 1993). This implies that universe and the observer exist as pairs and neither can exist without the other. The other concept is that a particle behaves in different ways at different times. This is clear from the famous two-slit experiment (Fig 7.2) which is the backbone of quantum mechanics and particle-wave duality.

Quantum numbers

Besides, the normal properties like mass, electrical charge, motion etc, the elementary particles have several other attributes which are denoted by Quantum numbers. These quantum numbers do not change continuously but in steps i.e. in multiples of simple numbers like 1 or 1/2, a concept of the quantum theory. Since we are venturing into the unknown territory of physics, names have been given at the fancy of the discoverer and should not be interpreted in terms of their literal meaning. Thus spin may not mean spin in the ordinary sense and there are quantum numbers like isospin, and positional (e.g. orbital) quantum numbers. Quarks, leptons and gluons are currently considered to be the basic building blocks out of which all the matter of the physical world is made. Protons, electrons and neutrons are now thought of as being built from six quarks and six leptons. The current particle models due to Gell-mann and others indicate three generations of quarks and leptons. Leptons include electron like particles, sometimes called mesons and the associated mass-less, or low mass neutrinos.

Fig. 7.2 The double slit experiment showing that photons (or electrons) act as particles when they are observed by particle detectors (D), giving the characteristic spots on the photographic plate (above), and waves when they go unobserved (below) giving rise to the well known interference pattern due to waves, proving the duality of behaviour of elementary particles.

First generation

Quarks: down and up quarks
Leptons: electron and its neutrino (v_e)

Second generation

Quarks: strange and charm quarks
Leptons: mu meson (µ) and its neutrino (v_µ)

Third generation

Quarks: bottom and top quarks
Leptons: Tau (τ) and its neutrino(v_τ).

These six quarks come in three colours (red, blue and yellow) making them 18 in all. The 18 quarks and the six leptons (and their antiparticles) sum up to 48. Gluons act as their carriers and there are eight of them. To this when we add the carriers of electromagnetic force i.e. photons, W^± bosons and Z⁰, the total goes to 60. These sixty particles make the whole Universe. To this may be added graviton, the anticipated carrier of gravitational field, not yet discovered.

The six types of quarks are named as up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm.

But "up" does not mean up in the colloquial sense, nor "bottom" means bottom but they are just names. All the names mean is that they are different from each other. Likewise they have been given quantum numbers called colour and flavour, which have nothing to do with their literal meaning. Colour actually means a type of force and flavour means another attribute. So when we say a quark has a colour (usually red, yellow or blue) it simply means that they experience a kind of force, called the "strong" force but to a different degree because they are different, i.e. have different attributes. Similarly gluons do have different flavours again meaning different attributes. What these attributes are in the context of common sense is debatable or rather inexpressible. But the main point of this discussion is that as we go to finer and finer constituents of matter, new attributes come into play and the number of attributes increase. This seemingly agrees with the principle of Anekāntavād.

Coat of Arms chosen by Niels Bohr

Fig. 7.3 Pictorial representation of principle of complementarity, indicating that contrary is complementary, based on Chinese concept of Yin and Yang. This was used as coat of arms by Neils Bohr to describe phenomena in Quantum mechanics.

Some Quantum phenomena cannot be described in a language, they appear "crazy and illogical", and cannot be comprehended by common logic. Generally all we can say is that perhaps, in this context, it is like that, a concept similar to Syādvād. Some of these states cannot be described with certainty or cannot be described at all and thus seemingly agree with the concept of Saptabhangi.

New principles were developed to define the behaviour of particles in the microworld. The principle of symmetry and complementarity seem to play some role in the macroworld too but in the micro world, we have, in addition, the Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, Pauli's Exclusion principle, Entanglement and some others. Before we discuss the quantum behaviour, we will briefly introduce some of these principles which have helped us in understanding the nature of the universe.

1. Principle of Complementarity
2. Principle of Symmetry
3. Uncertainty Principle
4. Exclusion Principle
5. Entanglement