Why zenOn?

Philosophical background

The name zenon comes from the Greek philosopher Zenon, who lived in Elea, the ancient Greek seaport colony of southern Italy. You may know it as Veglia in Campania, 40 km south of Paestum.

Zenon is mainly known for his paradoxes. For example, the paradox of Achilles and tortoise or the paradox of the flying arrow.

Although only fragments of Zenon s work are preserved, one can be sure that he dedicated his life to the search for knowledge. He is assigned to the sophists whose interest, among other things, are in common with rhetoric: the art of free, independent speech and the transfer of knowledge.

Logic and Dialog

The sophist Zenon sharpened the view that nothing can be accepted as given, but rather that everything can be put into question.

With his highly developed art of argumentation, he is said to be the founder of dialectics, which primarily focuses on communication using dialog. The classic logic according to the rules of the stoic on the other hand links elegant dialectic and rhetoric.

What does philosophy have to do with HMI and SCADA?

The Greek word philosophia literally means "love of knowledge". And even still today, the logic, thus the science of logically consistent thinking is an elementary part of philosophy.

In the area of automation, a certain "love of knowledge" is also to be developed. Namely then when it deals with understanding process sequences in order to visualize and optimize these in a virtual world - HMI and SCADA system.

Without the knowledge about the how, where, when and why of an automated solution one quickly reaches the limits of the feasibility and leaves many potentialities unused. And logic here is a core element: Be it the logic of PLC programs or the logic of an HMI/SCADA application.

And zenon?

Since the beginning of the development of zenon, the simplicity of the operation is a central component of our philosophy. Be it through parameterization instead of programming the highest innovative network or even FDA per mouse click.

zenon represents thus a type of paradox in the sense of Zenon from Elea: The simple to operate and yet still powerful HMI/SCADA system.

And like the stoics, we also see the impression of logic of zenon through rhetoric and dialectics:

Rhetoric when it has to do with communicating content, interdependencies and processes to a user as understandably as possible. For example, through modern, dynamic process images, trend diagrams or statistical analyses. And via the status processing, zenon offers the helpful meta information that is required in order to discern between truth and error.

Dialectic also describes the art of diverse communication with zenon. The HMI/SCADA software zenon distinguishes itself here in particular. Regardless which PLC is to be connected, whether the system should communicate in dialog with higher-ranking applications or whether it has to do with seamlessly integrating other programs in zenon: zenon speaks many languages and is open for communication in all directions.

For us thus the logical partner when it has to do with automation solutions. zenon: Innovative by tradition.

Would you like to know more? You will find continuative information and sources to

The paradox of Achilles and tortoise

Zeno s paradoxes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Vogt, Matthias, 'Dumonts Handbuch Philosophie', Publisher DuMont monte, Cologne, 2003