3 Review(s)

In The Scientific Foundations of Jainism Professor Mardia attempts to elucidate the point that Jainism is a science with religion. After a very brief introduction to the Jainism, the author introduces the four Axioms and discusses their theoretical and applied aspects and their plausibility in a modern context. It gives Jaina logic together with present trends in scientific thinking and indicates how Jainism and modern science are related. "Written by a modern thinker and a scientist with an international reputation in research and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. The Scientific Foundation of Jainism is a valuable guide in understanding Jainism. Mardia refers to the Jain claim that one can see the whole truth of Jain science when one attains kevalajnana or infinite knowledge! His efforts to reveal to us the truth of Jain science in an understandable way provide a testimony to the vast amount of knowledge he must have acquired through the dilligent study of the literature on Jainism. The book includes a bibliography, glossary and an index. Wherever possible, a sharper scientific pictorial representation has been given, and very few original terms are used in the text so that the flow of the arguments is not hampered. Paul Marett in the Foreword says "Prof. Mardia's book divides naturally into three parts. First he explains the basic ideas of the soul, karma, living beings and non-living matter, and brings these together in the Jain explanation of life and death and the universe. Next he moves from the general to the particular, to the practice of self-conquest and the path of the individual soul towards purification. Thirdly, in two chapters which demand, and reward, close reading, he places Jain logic in its rightful position as a valid and acceptable system, and draws together the most fundamental and up-to-date aspects of modern physics with the scientific theories of the Jain writers."