Tuesday 28 May 2013

logic - Why isn't '&' used for logical conjunction?

There is a beautiful and well-established logogram for "and" that is known to virtually every more or less educated person in the world - it's the ampersand '&'. It's completely unambiguous, as opposed to logical disjunction (I'm talking about its inclusive and exclusive versions).



Why is the ampersand not used universally to denote logical conjunction?



The best answer I can come up with is because actually drawing the symbol takes a bit of knack. However, there are two reasons this is not an answer:





  1. Drawing Greek letters takes quite a bit of knack as well, and they are all over the place in mathematics and logic.

  2. There are handwritten variations of the ampersand that are extremely easy to draw.



    Is using '$\wedge$' for logical conjunction just a historical accident?




P.S. I was of course lying when I said the ampersand is not used universally, as I have seen it used here and there, and I use it myself in my own writing.

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