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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines efforts to rethink formal models of computation through the lens of indigenous philosophies, in particular Jainism, at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata during the 1950s. These efforts culminated in the imagination of a nonbinary Turing machine.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the migration and hybridization of technical ideas, including mathematical and computational models, in postcolonial scientific institutions. My case study is centered at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata during the 1950s, then directed by Bengali statistician P. C. Mahalanobis. In the aftermath of formal independence from British colonial rule, Mahalanobis and his staff embarked on a quest to import or manufacture India's first digital computers. To consider the scientific laboratory as an urban contact zone for unexpected cultural encounters, I examine a collaboration between Mahalanobis and a migrant scientist, biologist J. B. S. Haldane, who left England and later became an Indian citizen. In particular, I focus on a lesser-known line of work by Mahalanobis and Haldane that existing historical accounts have mostly overlooked: efforts to rethink formal models of computation through the lens of indigenous philosophies, in particular Jainism. I analyze how these efforts culminated in the imagination of a nonbinary Turing machine, which would replace binary logic with the Jain sevenfold system of predication described in Sanskrit texts. By zeroing in on the story of the nonbinary Turing machine, I underscore how Indian scientists did not merely reconsider the moral implications of applying an existing computational technique or of choosing one piece of software or hardware over another. Rather, they aspired to radically rethink the most basic models and assumptions underlying modern computing. Their accomplishments and failures are instructive for those of us who grapple with the future possibilities and limitations of "decolonizing" computing.