Sundar Sarukkai

FSTTCS 2005: Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science

Invited Papers.- Semiperfect-Information Games.- Computational Complexity Since 1980.- Developments in Data Structure Research During the First 25 Years of FSTTCS.- Inference Systems for Logical Algorithms.- From Logic to Games.- Proving Lower Bounds Via Pseudo-random Generators.- Erd?s Magic.- Contributed Papers.- No Coreset, No Cry: II.- Improved Bounds on the Union Complexity of Fat Objects.- On the Bisimulation Congruence in ?-Calculus.- Extending Howes Method to Early Bisimulations for Typed Mobile Embedded Resources with Local Names.- Approximation Algorithms for Wavelength Assignment.- The Set Cover with Pairs Problem.- Non-disclosure for Distributed Mobile Code.- Quantitative Models and Implicit Complexity.- The MSO Theory of Connectedly Communicating Processes.- Reachability of Hennessy-Milner Properties for Weakly Extended PRS.- Decision Procedures for Queues with Integer Constraints.- The Directed Planar Reachability Problem.- Dimensions of Copeland-Erdos Sequences.- Refining the Undecidability Frontier of Hybrid Automata.- When Are Timed Automata Weakly Timed Bisimilar to Time Petri Nets?.- Subquadratic Algorithms for Workload-Aware Haar Wavelet Synopses.- Practical Algorithms for Tracking Database Join Sizes.- On Sampled Semantics of Timed Systems.- Eventual Timed Automata.- Causal Closure for MSC Languages.- Reachability Analysis of Multithreaded Software with Asynchronous Communication.- Probabilistic Analysis for a Multiple Depot Vehicle Routing Problem.- Computing the Expected Accumulated Reward and Gain for a Subclass of Infinite Markov Chains.- Towards a CTL* Tableau.- Bisimulation Quantified Logics: Undecidability.- Logarithmic-Time Single Deleter, Multiple Inserter Wait-Free Queues and Stacks.- Monitoring Stable Properties in Dynamic Peer-to-Peer Distributed Systems.- On the Expressiveness of TPTL and MTL.- Modal Strength Reduction in Quantified Discrete Duration Calculus.- Comparing Trees Via Crossing Minimization.- On Counting the Number of Consistent Genotype Assignments for Pedigrees.- Fixpoint Logics on Hierarchical Structures.- The Equivalence Problem for Deterministic MSO Tree Transducers Is Decidable.- Market Equilibrium for CES Exchange Economies: Existence, Multiplicity, and Computation.- Testing Concurrent Systems: An Interpretation of Intuitionistic Logic.- Proofs of Termination of Rewrite Systems for Polytime Functions.- On the Controller Synthesis for Finite-State Markov Decision Processes.- Reasoning About Quantum Knowledge.

Indian Experiences with Science: Considerations for History, Philosophy, and Science Education

This chapter explores how perspectives on science drawn from Indian experiences can contribute to the interface between history and philosophy of science (HPS) and science education (SE). HPS is encoded in science texts in the various presuppositions that underlie both the content and the way the content is presented. Thus, a deeper engagement with contemporary work in HPS will be of great significance to science teaching. By drawing on the notion of multicultural origins of science as well as redefining the nature of science debate by invoking the Indian engagement with science, this chapter aims to make both HPS and SE more sensitive to other cultural understandings of science and scientific method. The last two sections describe ways of drawing on the Indian philosophical traditions that could be relevant for contemporary debates, such as constructivism and teaching critical thinking, in science education.

Translation as Method: Implications for History of Science

In The Circulation of Knowledge Between Britain, India and China, twelve scholars examine how knowledge, things and people moved within, and between, the East and the West from the early modern period to the twentieth century.

The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science (review)

© 2011 by University of Hawai‘i Press fort to facilitate understanding (one thinks of B. K. Matilal, J. N. Mohanty, and others in this regard). Thus, an account of the Advaitic sākṣin may include a discussion of Husserl’s transcendental ego or Sartre’s prereflective consciousness, or an account of the Yogācāra view of consciousness as having a form might be contrasted with G. E. Moore’s account of consciousness as diaphanous. Similarly, describing the sense in which, say, Yogācāra can be characterized as idealist, Nyāya as realist, Advaita as non-realist, et cetera, has become a widespread practice in recent works. The comparisons serve to provide a context that increases understanding and suggests new avenues of research. And while Timalsina is certainly under no obligation to engage in comparative philosophy — or, for that matter, to reach scholars unfamiliar with but interested in Indian thought — it is clear that the fruits of the current study and the author’s command of the material have much to offer in this connection, and it would be most welcome to see future researches by Timalsina engage the variety of issues addressed by contemporary cross-cultural philosophical studies.

Indian Logic and Philosophy of Science: The Logic-Epistemology Link

There are many interesting themes in Indian logic which illustrate not just philosophical complexity and rigour but also their potential use in philosophy of science. Matilal describes Indian logic as the “systematic study of informal inference-patterns, the rules of debate, the identification of sound inference vis-a-vis sophistical argument, and similar topics.” An important task for Indian logicians was to critically understand which inferences are valid and what conditions they should obey in order to have certainty in inference. Thus, Indian logicians were deeply concerned about establishing a theory to know which inferential statements one could be certain about and the methodology to decide on their validity. The early Nyāya logic is exemplified by the five-step argument and there has been much discussion on whether it is equivalent to a syllogistic form.

Complexity and Randomness in Mathematics: Philosophical Reflections on the Relevance for Economic Modelling

Mathematics itself is a complex system. It exemplifies complexity at the level of structure, hierarchy and so on. There is also an interesting notion of complexity present in the meaning of mathematical ‘alphabets’. These are unique writing strategies of mathematics. Yet another marker of complexity lies in the process of applying mathematics to models. Using mathematics in modelling is a process of deciding what kinds of models to construct and what types of mathematics to use. Modelling can be seen as a decision‐making process where the scientists are the agents. However in choosing mathematical structures the scientist is not being optimally rational. In fact, fertile uses of mathematics in the sciences show a complicated use of mathematics that cannot be reduced to a method or to rational principles. This paper argues that the discourse of satisficing and bounded rationality well describes the process of choice and decision inherent in modelling.

Multisemiosis and Incommensurability

Central to Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability are the ideas of meaning variance and lexicon, and the impossibility of translation of terms across different theories. Such a notion of incommensurability is based on a particular understanding of what a scientific language is. In this paper we first attempt to understand this notion of scientific language in the context of incommensurability. We consider the consequences of the essential multisemiotic character of scientific theories and show how this leads to even a single theory being potentially ‘internally incommensurable’. We then discuss Kuhn’s lexicon‐based approach to incommensurability and the problems associated with it. Finally we argue that this approach by Kuhn has interesting overlaps with the problem of meaning associated with multisemiosis, particularly the challenge of understanding the process of symbolization in scientific theories.

Beauty in the Beast

In this era of the growing presence of technology in art, a trend well exemplified by digital art, how do we find deeper terms of engagement between art and technology? I want to suggest here that artists can enlarge our understanding of technology, not by becoming technocrats but by enriching the ways in which we talk about technology. One of the essential modes of enrichment is to invoke the idea of beauty and place it within the domain of technology. By bringing beauty to bear upon technology, we can make technology answerable to the call of beauty, thereby taking it away from an excessive preoccupation with functionality, use-value and efficiency. But why beauty? Susan Sontag writes that “it is in art that beauty as an idea, an eternal idea, is best embodied” [1]. Art’s capacity to invoke the idea of beauty, to give it a place of residence within art’s activities, is what makes art unique. Art responds to the question of beauty, and as an activity it generates the idea of beauty. Art and technology are poles apart. Technology is our beast of burden, doing things for us, whether carrying loads, transporting people or even checking our spelling on the computer. Machines as subservient to humans, as doing the work of and for humans, has been a dominant image of technology. In creating this image of technology we have consistently ignored the possibility of beauty in the beast. It is not that art has always comfortably co-existed with beauty. Critic Arthur C. Danto notes the disappearance of beauty from the vocabulary and philosophy of art of the 1960s, but goes on to suggest that “the immense esteem in which art continues to be held today is an inheritance of this exalted view of beauty” [2], a view held in the beginning of the 20th century. The high expectations from this exalted view of beauty has actually led to the de-privileging of beauty in art. Nevertheless, invoking beauty in the context of technology is useful for at least two reasons. Beauty, from ancient times and in all cultures, has often been associated with morality. Danto goes to the extent of saying that it “was the moral weight that was assigned to beauty that helps us understand why the first generation of the twentieth-century avant-garde found it so urgent to dislodge beauty from its mistaken place in the philosophy of art” [3]. If modernist and avant-garde movements reacted violently against the notion of beauty, it is, as Danto notes, partly a reaction against the moral weight imposed on art. The association of beauty with morality is perhaps one reason why technology shies away from seriously considering beauty as part of the discourse of technology. Is the neglect of beauty by technology largely catalyzed by the fear of the moral imperative as a parameter of technological development? Bringing beauty to the forefront of judgments about technology would actually introduce a sense of morality into technology. Note that this argument allows us to differentiate between artisanship and technology. Artisanship, placed within certain cultural practices and engaging with the idea of beauty, carries a moral burden, which modern technology refuses to do. Also, in the words of Sontag, beauty has always been identified with women. On the flip side, technology has always been identified with the masculine. Everything about technology reflects characteristics of the gendered male. This masculine image of technology has no

Topological feedback in Kaluza-Klein theory

Abstract We know that certain four-manifolds allow for a nontrivial topological U(1) contribution. We show that such contributions can arise in the usual five-dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory. This approach suggests that the radius of the fifth dimension can be fixed in this manner. This mechanism is illustrated using euclidean gravitational instantons as the base manifold.