5.6. Comparison with Theory of Relativity

Often people and even scholars of Jain philosophy can be seen or heard calling or comparing anekantavada with Einstein’s theory of relativity which is not right at all as deeper study of anekantavada shows that it has its roots and meaning way ahead than the theory of relativity.

Hence the latter can be a smaller part of anekantavada but not the whole theory itself.

‘In the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) the parameters of movement of an article (speed, time, spatial measurements) rely upon the edges of reference of the eyewitness and the article, their movement (or increasing speed) is with respect to one another. On the off chance if one is searching for similitude between the special theory and Anekantavada, it tends to be said that learning regarding an object relies upon the point of view of the onlooker, for example his frame of mind. To expand the similarity further, as imagined in STR, time and space (and motion) are not absolute, so do in Anekanta, depiction of nature of a thing isn't absolute however relative.’^[1]

Besides time and space, anekantavada is also compared with relativism which itself defines as:

‘Knowledge, truth and morals exist in connection to culture, society and verifiable setting and are not absolute’^[2] .

Anekantavada is not only called relativism but also as theory of multifaceted-ness, multisided-ness etc. as mentioned previously.

Anekantavada is the main principle that states that, ‘everything in the universe is changing its mode every moment and thus has multiple aspects.’ It can also be understood as–the presence of infinite attributes, some even opposite or contradictory, in an object i.e. anantadharmatmakta.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

SPJ. pp. 26

[2]:

www.google.com (retrieved on 12.08.2018 @ 10 AM)