2
$\begingroup$

In reading through Claude Shannon's paper: A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits.

As a software engineer, I got confused by Shannon's choice to have 0 as representing a closed circuit, i.e with electricity flowing through, and following from that, 0 as representing a false proposition.

Intuitively, it seems like: - 1 should represent a closed circuit (but I can deal with this not being the case) - A closed circuit should represent a proposition that is true

Why would a closed circuit, i.e a circuit with electricity flowing through it be considered to represent a proposition that is false? Why would an open circuit represent a proposition that is true when there is no electricity flowing through it? Am I holding on too firmly to notions of logical operators from programming languages?

$\endgroup$
2
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ It is only a convention... Maybe the reason for adopting closed to mean$ 0$ is suggested at page 4 : "or closed (zero impedence)". $\endgroup$
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented Mar 2, 2019 at 13:30
  • $\begingroup$ The choice of $0$ for False was due to Boole. $\endgroup$
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented Mar 2, 2019 at 13:35

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .