JAIN ENLIGHTENMENT - A Cosmic Way of Life

"ANEKANTAVAD AS A PHYSICAL REALITY

by Narendra Bhandari

During the process of reading and studying to understand and learn Jain Cosmology in relation to Anekantvad ... the film team researches to explore the 4 principles of Jain Dharma:

1. Principle of Complementarity
2. Principle of Symmetry

3. Uncertainty Principle

4. Exclusion Principle

Principle of Complementarity - The principle of complementarity implies that opposites are complementary and, together they describe the real world.   This dual behaviour of a photon could not be reconciled because of the basic nature of waves and particles were considered to be exclusive or different from each other.

Bohr explained this by saying that contradictory behaviour is complementary and used the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang, which are both opposite but exist together and are required for sake of completeness.   Thus complementarity became the cornerstone of quantum behaviour , to which we will revert in some detail later on.

Principle of Symmetry: Nature loves symmetry. Symmetry has been the backbone of understanding nature.   Life forms, galaxies, planets, trees, molecules, atoms etc are all symmetrical. There are many forms of symmetry. Left and right symmetry, mirror symmetry, time symmetry and so on.

As a filmmaker, I discovered this reality when visiting the Ranakpur Temple - where this explanation:
Some times a symmetry is also violated like parity is a mirror symmetry which is found to be violated in certain reactions. Thus existence of symmetry and its violation, both are of fundamental importance in understanding the nature of the basic processes governing the behavior of fundamental particles.

Uncertainty principle: Applicable mainly to the microworld, the Heisenberg's theory of Uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to completely quantify all the parameters describing the state of a particle precisely.

If measurement of some physical quantity is made, then according to quantum physics, the state of the particle is deemed to have changed instantly into a different state. It is not because one can not measure the parameters accurately because of limitations of the instruments or their precision but that the measurement can not be made without changing the state of the particle. For example, both the parameters in the pairs of energy (E) and time (t), or position (x) and momentum (p) can only be known within some uncertainty Δ (ΔEΔt=h; ΔpΔx=h), defined by the Planck's constant h, which has a very small, but none the less, finite value. Uncertainty principle is one of the most fundamental principles applicable to the realm of all the physical microworld

This indeterminacy may also be the root cause of Syadvada (ºªÉÉnÂù ´ÉÉnù), another Jain concept. Syādvād, a corollary of Anekantvad, is also considered as a cornerstone of Jain philosophy. It has been translated as "perhaps", or "May be" which appears to me as very qualitative (or crude) definition. In a larger perspective, the uncertainty principle offers a choice, though limited, in behaviour of nature.

The Jain philosophy recognizes only three entities in the universe, the Gyata (the knower), Gyeya (the object to be known) and the Gyan (the knowledge). The transfer of knowledge from the object to the knower changes both the object and the knower. This is precisely what happens according to the uncertainty principle so that with every measurement, the object changes and it is not possible to determine its state completely, which may require several measurements.

Exclusion Principle: The Principle, first enunciated by Pauli states that two elementary particles in the same" state" can not exist together. Nobody can state it better or more rigorously or elegantly than Kabir, when he, after he gained enlightenment said "When I am there, God is not there and when God is there I don’t exist, because the space is too narrow to accommodate both of us (being in the same state). Having pointed out that the laws which operate upon the gross universe and the micro universe are different, we revert to the two propositions made at the beginning of this article to define Anekantvad.

The first proposition is easy to prove even by simple logic. If the universe is without a beginning, then when did the vast diversity, we see today in the multifaceted universe, begin, if everything originated from "one". Thus, in the physical world, as in philosophy, things or ideas have plurality of attributes and these can be apparently contradictory or conflicting.

Anekāntvād successfully harmonises or accommodates such views and completes the description of physical reality. But when we talk of many foldedness, the question obviously arises, how many.

Certainly more than one, but can it be infinite? saptbhangi or sevenfoldedness is a corollary of Anekantvad. This has been very clearly explained by D.S. Kothari in his essay on "Complementarity principle and Eastern philosophy".

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 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 its 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 Gellmann and others indicate three generations of quarks and leptons. Leptons include electron like particles, sometimes called mesons and the associated mass-less neutrinos.

First generation - Quarks: down and up quarks Leptons: electron and its neutrino (νe)
Second generation - Quarks: strange and charm quarks Leptons: mu meson (μ) and its neutrino (νμ)
Third generation Quarks: bottom and top quarks Leptons: Tau (τ )and its neutrino( ντ).
These 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. Gluon's 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 carrier of gravitational field.

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. Like wise 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 they experience a kind of force, called the "strong" force but are different, ie have different attributes.

Similarly gluons do have flavour and different attributes. What these attributes are in the context of common sense is debatable or rather inexpressible. The lesson, in context of Anekantvad is that as we go to finer constituents of matter, new attributes come into play and the number of attributes increase. The concept that there would be one fundamental particle in nature which has given rise to the visible universe is erroneous and is the crux of Anekantvad.

The author states: let me ask my question in another way! If I hold "a" particular perspective of a thing or "concept", is it a limitation of my consciousness or it is the way the object reveals itself. I take the premise that the consciousness has no limitation of comprehension and is capable of conceiving many or all the perspectives at once . It is the object which exhibits different perspectives at different times , in different contexts. In other words multiple perspectives is the inherent quality of an object of the physical world.

Thus Anekāntvād is not simply a multiview perception theory but enables us to understand the true nature of reality. It is not a limitation of consciousness that it has limited capability of perception of the physical world . It is not looking at an object from different perspectives but that the object itself exhibits multiple perspectives which can not all be known at the same time to describe its "state" completely. Therefore, in the physical realm, Anekāntvād is as fundamental as the Uncertainty principle, which states that some properties can not be measured accurately, not because of inherent nature of the behaviour in the microworld.

Separately, the various quantum numbers may describe only a part of the reality, but taken together they described the whole. In the microworld, we encounter two other phenomena which have some relevance in the present discussion :confinement and entanglement

The property of "confinement" of quarks in the quark-gluon plasma has been observed. Simply stated, quarks can not be isolated as free particles. It will only be speculative to think of what other attributes will be observed as one goes to further finer and finer constituents of matter, of quarks, if there are any. Entanglement implies that all the particles in the universe behave in an inter-related manner,

Briefly stated, when two systems, of which we know the states, enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and after a time of mutual influence, the system separate again, then they no longer be described in the same way as before. By interaction, we may say the quantum states have become entangled. All the particles in the Universe interacted together at the time of Big Bang and therefore they are all entangled.

Basic Forces of Nature -- At this point of discussion it may be useful to briefly enumerate various forces of nature which affect these particles. Is every thing controlled by one kind of force, which manifests in different ways at different energies or there are many kinds of basic forces.

Long time ago electric and magnetic forces were considered to be different till Maxwell, way back in 1863, showed that they are one and the same , now called the electromagnetic force. They control the behaviour of charged particles. Then there is gravitation which is the weakest of all, but binds all the matter in the universe together. For understanding behaviour of elementary particles we need two nuclear forces, the weak ( responsible for reactions where neutrinos are involved) and the strong (which binds the quarks and nucleons in an atom together).

Recently Weinberg and Salam showed that the weak force is the same as electromagnetic force at high energy (temperature> 1029K) and only at lower temperature they appear to be different. For this synthesis they got a Nobel Prize. Thus we say that electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces have been unified into electro weak force.

Thus, as of now, we are left with three basic forces of nature: gravitation, strong nuclear force and electroweak. It would be satisfying and simpler if all these three forces are a manifestation of "one" single force and therefore attempts have been made to unify them in a Grand unification theory (GUT) or theory of everything (TOE). Lot of efforts are being made to unify these various forces of nature.

The greatest unification of all times was done by Einstein who showed that mass and energy is the same thing and gave his famous formula E= mc2. Whether there is only one ultimate force of nature or there are many, remains to be ascertained by further research but as of now it is difficult to reconcile the three forces into one, again consistent with Anekantvad.

We thus see that by properly amalgamating Jain concepts with concepts of modern physics, it should be possible to ascertain the true nature of reality and make further predictions. Anekantvad can be applied to test many predictions of modern science and may have a role to play in making a correct choice between different possibilities.

JAIN ENLIGHTENMENT - A Cosmic Way of Life

Thursday, March 17, 2011

FILM SAMPLES ON JAINISM

Monday, August 2, 2010

UNDERSTANDING & LEARNING JAIN COSMOLOGY - Continued