MEDIEVAL LOGICS LAMBERT MARIE DE RIJK (ed.), Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De mod0 opponendiet respondendi, Einleitung und Ausgabe der einschlagigen Texte. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge Band 17.) Miinster: Aschendorff, 1980. 379 pp. No price stated. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARTA FATTORI, Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1980. Two volumes, il + 543, 520 pp. Lire 65.000. VIVIAN SALMON, The study of language in 17th century England. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory (...) and History of Linguistic Science, Series 111: Studies in theHistory of Linguistics, Volume 17.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979.x + 218 pp. Dfl. 65. Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhaltnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. (Akten des 111. Internationalen Leibnizkongress, Hannover, 12. bis 17.November 1977, Band 111: Logik, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Metaphysik, Theologie.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. vii + 269 pp. DM 48. CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS MICHAEL CLARK, The place of syllogistic in logical theory. Nottingham: University of Nottingham Press, 1980. ix + 151 pp. £3.00. A.F. PARKER-RHODES, The theory of indistinguishables. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981. xvii + 216 pp. Dfl.90.00/$39.50. NICHOLAS RESCHER and ROBERT BRANDOM, The logic of inconsistency. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1980. x + 174 pp. f 11.50. MISCELLANEOUS J. ZELENY, The logic of Marx. Translated from the German by T. Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xcii + 247 pp. £12.50. FELIX KAUFMANN, The infinite in mathematics. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Introduction by E. Nagel. Translation from the German by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. xvii + 235 pp. Dfl 85/$39.50 (cloth); Dfl 45/$19.95 (paper). PAMELA MCCORDUCK, Machines who think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979. xiv + 275 pp. $14.95. J. MITTELSTRASS (ed.), Enzyklopadie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie Bd. 1 : A-G. Mannheim, Wien, Ziirich: Bibliographisches Institut, 1980. 835 pp. DM 128. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 321 metaphysical conclusions: " It was assumed by the medieval theists •.• that there is something inherently inferior about the temporal compared with the timeless. Being temporal was an infliction, a sort of body odor from which everything of this world reeked. For a complex set of reasons, some psychological having to do with the fear of death and decay, others socioeconomic concerning their disdain for the (...) inferior class of people who were forced to manipulate changing objects, they assumed that true being must he found in what is immutable..." (p. 54). Gale's hook is quite thorough in its review of the relevant literature of contemporary analytical philosophers on the existence of God and affords a rich feast for anyone looking for an almost boundless supply of carefully fashioned logical arguments questioning the conclusions of those who have used analytic philosopy to defend theistic tenets. For philosophers hungering for a truly insightful contemporary approach to the question of God's existence and nature, however, the hook provides hut meager fare. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, California MICHAEL J. DODDS, 0.P. Die Gnade vollendeter Endlichkeit: Zur transzendentaltheologischen Auslegung der thomanischen Anthropologie. By RICHARD SCHENK, O.P. Freihurg: Herder, 1989. Pp. 638. 98 DM. The title of this hook, which could he rendered into English as, roughly, The Grace of Perfect Imperfection, could strike one as ironic, and yet it intrigues by promising a new way of looking at a fundamental anthropological problem. The hook delivers on this promise hut, in so doing, creates difficulties for the reviewer. For this new way of looking is so thoroughly grounded in the history of philosophy and theology, its scope is so broad, its implications so profound that it demands a greater arena than a hook review to do it justice. There· fore, I will content myself with introducing its structure and content as well as indicating to whom this hook may appeal. The work is the doctoral dissertation of Schenk, done at the University of Munich. It is an attempt to develop an historically grounded, yet transcendental interpretation of Thomistic anthropology which avoids the experiential supernaturalism of Karl Rahner's theology. Schenk demonstrates the possibility of an alternative reading by developing the differences between Heidegger and Rahner in their respec· 322 BOOK REVIEWS tive notions of transcendence. These three, Thomas, Heidegger and Rahner, are the chief discussion partners for Schenk, although the foot· notes and bibliography reveal a familiarity with the secondary literature that is breathtaking. The first chapter is Schenk's exploration of twelve antitheses. Its purpose seems more negative than positive in that it prevents the reader from simply categorizing Schenk's work and interpretation as either " history " or a " new interpretation," as either " perennial " or " contemporary ", to mention just two of the antitheses. The second chapter is the longest, most difficult and, from a systematic viewpoint, most important of the work. Schenk lays out the alternative views, stemming from Porphyry's and Proclus' schools of Neoplatonism respectively, of the theodicy problematics, which were available to Thomas in constructing his anthropology. Schenk's choice of the theodicy problem as a focus is particularly fruitful, since it allows him to show how all of the fundamental theological anthropological issues, such as nature and grace, death, epistemology and freedom are involved and affected. The fundamental question can he formullated thus: Is the perfection of the human being accomplished in his or her own subjectivity or in its being surmounted? It is also here that Schenk's work shows its power in areas beyond the merely speculative. His concentration on the theodicy problem brings an almost " pastoral " side to the work, in that it seeks to avoid easy answers to the difficult question of why God allows human suffering. This question is not put aside by the Gospel hut made more pointed. Thomas seeks to follow and enhance what went before him (and here we have moved into the third chapter) by not functionalizing suffering and yet maintaining the call of the individual to salvation. It is precisely in this place, in this antinomy between the pri· mordial hope for perfection and the equally primordial doubt of ever attaining it, that... (shrink)

A coherent treatment of the flow of ideas throughout Darwin's works, this volume presents a unified theoretical system that explains Darwin's investigations, evaluating the literature from a historical, scientific, and philosophical perspective.

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now drive (...) cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a ‘bioinformationalist’ response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon. (shrink)

This paper raises a problem for the pair of views that universals are immanent in their instantiations and that these instantiations, or states of affairs, are somehow constructed from the instantiated universals. It is argued that the pair is inconsistent. The first view implies that universals are prior to states of affairs, whereas the second view implies that states of affairs are prior to universals. This paper does not attempt to solve this problem, but rather to formulate it precisely. That (...) promises to illuminate how to solve the problem if it can be solved, or why it cannot be solved if it is unsolvable. (shrink)

In a rich and thought-provoking paper, Lambros Malafouris argues that taking material culture seriously means to be ‘systematically concerned with figuring out the causal efficacy of materiality in the enactment and constitution of a cognitive system or operation’ (Malafouris 2004, 55). As I understand this view, there are really two intertwined claims to be established. The first is that the things beyond the skin that make up material culture (in other words, the physical objects and artefacts in which cultural networks (...) and systems of human social relations are realized) may be essential to the enactment of, and be partly constitutive of, certain cognitive systems or operations. The consequence of establishing this claim is supposed to be that we have a mandate to recast the boundaries of the mind so as to include, as proper parts of the mind, things located beyond the skin. Thus, in talking about the contribution of the world to cognition, Malafouris (2004, 58) concludes that ‘what we have traditionally construed as an active or passive but always clearly separated external stimulus for setting a cognitive mechanism into motion, may be after all a continuous part of the machinery itself; at least ex hypothesi’. This is the position that, in philosophical circles, is known increasingly as the extended mind hypothesis (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Menary forthcoming). Henceforth I shall refer to this hypothesis as EM. A stock example will help bring the idea into view. Rumelhart et al. (1986) note that most of us solve difficult multiplication problems by using ‘pen and paper’ as an external resource. This environmental prop enables us to transform a difficult cognitive problem into a set of simpler ones, and to temporarily store the results of certain intermediate calculations. For the fan of EM, the distributed combination of this external resource and certain inner psychological processes constitutes a cognitive system in its own right. (shrink)

This paper is an experiment in collective writing conducted in Autumn 2019 at the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. The experiment involves 12 international masters' students readi...

Does human life have meaning? Ever since Darwin, there has been great skepticism about whether a "meaning of life" was possible outside of religious belief. Is it possible to find meaning in human life? Philosopher of science Michael Ruse examines the question of meaning in life within Darwinian views of human nature. He argues that meaning in the Darwinian age can be found if we turn to a kind of Darwinian existentialism, seeing our evolved human nature as the source (...) of all meaning, both in the intellectual and social worlds. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Ahead of Print. How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in virtue of their (...) individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation. (shrink)

However, other leading philosophers of the era--such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and J.G. Herder--placed greater emphasis on feeling, seeing moral and political ...

Das anthropologische Konzept der Verletzlichkeit wird seit einigen Jahren als Alternative zu einem autonomie-zentrierten Zugang zur Medizinethik diskutiert. Was aber genau unter Verletzlichkeit bzw. Vulnerabilität zu verstehen ist, und worin die moralische Relevanz derselben besteht, bleibt eine kontrovers diskutierte Frage. In einem dreijährigen Diskursprojekt haben die Autor/-innen dieses Bandes sich in unterschiedlichen Perspektiven mit dem Konzept der Verletzlichkeit des Menschen befasst. Der Band versammelt als Ergebnis dieses gemeinsamen Diskurses unterschiedliche philosophische, theologische und medizinethische Perspektiven, die sich mit anthropologischen und ethischen (...) Grundlagen des Phänomens der menschlichen Verletzlichkeit, sowie mit seiner Funktion und Relevanz für konkrete medizinethische Fragestellungen befassen. (shrink)

Most anyone interested in such topics as creation mythology, Jungian theory, or the idea of "secret teachings" in ancient Judaism and Christianity has found "gnosticism" compelling. Yet the term "gnosticism," which often connotes a single rebellious movement against the prevailing religions of late antiquity, gives the false impression of a monolithic religious phenomenon. Here Michael Williams challenges the validity of the widely invoked category of ancient "gnosticism" and the ways it has been described. Presenting such famous writings and movements (...) as the Apocryphon of John and Valentinian Christianity, Williams uncovers the similarities and differences among some major traditions widely categorized as gnostic. He provides an eloquent, systematic argument for a more accurate way to discuss these interpretive approaches.The modern construct "gnosticism" is not justified by any ancient self-definition, and many of the most commonly cited religious features that supposedly define gnosticism phenomenologically turn out to be questionable. Exploring the sample sets of "gnostic" teachings, Williams refutes generalizations concerning asceticism and libertinism, attitudes toward the body and the created world, and alleged features of protest, parasitism, and elitism. He sketches a fresh model for understanding ancient innovations on more "mainstream" Judaism and Christianity, a model that is informed by modern research on dynamics in new religious movements and is freed from the false stereotypes from which the category "gnosticism" has been constructed. (shrink)

This book presents the first critical examination of the overlapping ethical, sociocultural, and policy-related issues surrounding disasters, global bioethics, and public health ethics. These issues are elucidated under the conceptual rubric: Public health disasters. The book defines PHDs as public health issues with devastating social consequences, the attendant public health impacts of natural or man-made disasters, and latent or low prevalence public health issues with the potential to rapidly acquire pandemic capacities. This notion is illustrated using Ebola and pandemic influenza (...) outbreaks, atypical drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the health emergencies of earthquakes as focal points. Drawing on an approach that reckons with microbial, existential, and anthropological realities; the book develops a relational-based global ethical framework that can help address the local, anthropological, ecological, and transnational dynamics of the ethical issues engendered by public health disasters. The book also charts some of the critical roles that relevant local and transnational stakeholders may play in translating the proposed global ethical framework from the sphere of concept to the arena of action. This title is of immense benefit to bioethics scholars, public and global health policy experts, as well as graduate students working in the area of global health, public health ethics, and disaster bioethics. (shrink)

Illuminates the influence of 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault, focusing on the notion of genealogy.

Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know provides a balanced look at the topic, considering atheism historically, philosophically, theologically, sociologically and psychologically.

With contributions from medicine, psychology and philosophy, Pathways into the Jungian World looks at the central issues of commonality and difference in phenomenology and analytical psychology. The essays investigate how existential phenomenology and analytical psychology have been involved in the same fundamental cultural and therapeutic project. They both legitimize the subtlety, complexity, and depth of experience in an age when the meaning of experience has been abandoned to the dictates of pharmaceutical technology, economics and medical psychiatry. The contributors reveal how (...) Jung's relationship to the phenomenological tradition is being developed and rigorously show that the psychological resonance of the world is immediately available for phenomenological description. Contributors: Lionel Corbett, Veronica Goodchild, John Haule, David Michael Levin, Stanton Marlan, Bertha Mook, Robert Romanyshyn, Ronald Schenk, Charles E. Scott, Eva Marie Simms, Michael P. Sipiora, Mary Watkins, Mark Welman. (shrink)

We present a number of equivalent calculi for many-valued logics and prove soundness and strong completeness theorems. The calculi are obtained from the truth tables of the logic under consideration in a straightforward manner and there is a natural duality among these calculi. We also prove the cut elimination theorems for the sequent-like systems.

Rationalism, Platonism and God comprises three main papers on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It provides a significant contribution to the exploration of the common ground of the great early-modern Rationalist theories, and an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. -/- John Cottingham identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes's cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and 'contemplative', the (...) other modern and 'controlling'. He finds the same tension in Descartes's moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. -/- Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? Michael Ayers argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes's Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology - like the physics - is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. -/- Robert Merrihew Adams focuses on the Rationalists' arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of 'the priority of the perfect', i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. He finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz's for consideration. -/- These papers receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza. (shrink)

Ever since I abandoned the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, I have sought solutions of philosophical problems by means of analysis, and I remain firmly persuaded, in spite of some modern tendencies to the contrary, that only by analysing is progress possible. (Russell, My Philosophical Development, ch. 1).

The essays in this volume commemorate the 70th anniversary of Jacques Maritain's Pour la Justice, in which the French Thomist and future drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grappled with the moral, political, and religious challenges facing Europe in the aftermath of World War II. During this time Maritain reflected on humanism, Christian philosophy, the relation between freedom, religion and politics, and increasingly, on education. Several scholars reflect on the historical impact of Maritain's own writings during World War (...) II, Vatican II, and the Spanish Civil war. In other sections, contemporary Thomists suggest ways a resurgent Thomism can engage with the pressing issues of our own day. Essays on Thomistic ethics address problems in bioethics, the philosophy of love, and the foundations of Natural Law, while others tackle perennial problems in metaphysics and epistemology, such as the problem of free will, subjectivity, and the role of creative intuition in aesthetics. Still other essays apply Maritain's work on education to current challenges facing religious universities today. The contributors to this volume include: Noel Adams, Florian Michel, Sr. Anne Frances Ai Le, Brian Kemple, Stephen Chamberlain, Walter Schulz, Francisco Eduardo Plaza, James Jacobs, John Dunaway, Greg Kerr, Megan Furman, Karen Chan, Justin Gable, Federico Tedesco, Michael Torre, Richard Schenk, OP, and Gregory Reichberg. (shrink)

Ever since Darwin, scholars have noted that cultural entities such as languages, laws and theories seem to evolve through variation, selection and replication. These essays consider whether this comparison is just a metaphor.

Many people today glorify wild nature. This attitude is diametrically opposed to the denigration of wild nature that was common in the seventeenth century. One of the most significant initiators of the modern revaluation of nature was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. I elucidate here Shaftesbury’s pivotal view of nature. I show how that view emerged as Shaftesbury’s solution to a problem he took to be of the deepest philosophical and personal importance: the problem of how worship (...) of God can be both transportingly emotional and entirely rational. In section 1 I sketch the denigration of wild nature in two of Shaftesbury’s predecessors: Burnet and Locke. I next turn to Shaftesbury’s problem, describing in section 2 the love of God he aspired to and in section 3 his commitment to rational religion. I then explain Shaftesbury’s solution, describing in section 4 his view of beauty in general and in section 5 his view of the beauty of nature. (shrink)

Starting from an analogy with Quine’s two dogmas of empiricism, I offer a critique of two dogmas of analytic historiography: the belief in a cleavage between the justification of a ph...

This original and provocative study tells the story of American literary history from the perspective of its environmental context. Weaving together close readings of early American texts with ecological histories of tobacco, potatoes, apples and honey bees, Michael Ziser presents a method for literary criticism that explodes the conceptual distinction between the civilized and natural world. Beginning with the English exploration of Virginia in the sixteenth century, Ziser argues that the settlement of the 'New World' - and the cultivation (...) and exploitation of its bounty - dramatically altered how writers used language to describe the phenomena they encountered on the frontier. Examining the work of Harriot, Grainger, Cooper, Thoreau and others, Ziser reveals how these authors, whether consciously or not, transcribed the vibrant ecology of North America, and the ways that the environment helped codify a uniquely American literary aesthetic of lasting importance. (shrink)

The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments follows the remarkable itinerary of Jacques Derrida’s final seminar, “The Beast and the Sovereign”, as the explicit themes of the seminar—namely, sovereignty and the question of the animal—come to be supplemented and interrupted by questions of death, mourning, survival, the archive, and, especially, the end of the world. The book begins with Derrida’s analyses, in the first year of the seminar, of the question of the animal in the context of his (...) other published works on the same subject. It then follows Derrida through the second year of the seminar, presented in Paris from December 2002 to March 2003, as a very different tone begins to make itself heard, one that wavers between melancholy and an extraordinary lucidity with regard to the end. Focusing the entire year on just two works, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Martin Heidegger’s seminar of 1929–30, “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics,” the seminar comes to be dominated by questions of the end of the world and of an originary violence that at once gives rise to and effaces all things. The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments follows Derrida as he responds from week to week to these emerging questions, as well as to important events unfolding around him, both world events—the aftermath of 9/11, the American invasion of Iraq—and more personal ones, from the death of Maurice Blanchot to intimations of his own death less than two years away. All this, the book concludes, makes this final seminar an absolutely unique work in Derrida’s corpus, one that both speaks of death as the end of the world and itself now testifies to that end—just one, though hardly the least, of its many teachable moments. (shrink)

Religious Education (RE) currently enjoys the status of a compulsory curriculum subject in state schools in England and Wales. Though it is not part of the National Curriculum, and therefore not subject to a nationally prescribed syllabus, it is part of the basic curriculum to which all children are entitled. The question I raise in this chapter is whether RE merits this status. Is the study of religion sufficiently central to the task of preparing children for adult life to justify (...) the existence of a separate and compulsory curriculum subject? (shrink)

Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre is an eminent scientist who has also had a part-time career as a musician. From a lifetime's thinking, he offers this extraordinary synthesis exposing the deepest connections between science, music, and mathematics, while avoiding equations and technical jargon. He begins with perception psychology and the dichotomization instinct and then takes us through biological evolution, human language, and acausality illusions all the way to the climate crisis and the weaponization of the social media, and beyond that (...) into the deepest parts of theoretical physics - demonstrating our unconscious mathematical abilities. He also has an important message of hope for the future. Contrary to popular belief, biological evolution has given us not only the nastiest, but also the most compassionate and cooperative parts of human nature. This insight comes from recognizing that biological evolution is more than a simple competition between selfish genes. Rather, he suggests, in some ways it is more like turbulent fluid flow, a complex process spanning a vast range of timescales. Professor McIntyre is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) and has worked on problems as diverse as the Sun's magnetic interior, the Antarctic ozone hole, jet streams in the atmosphere, and the psychophysics of violin sound. He has long been interested in how different branches of science can better communicate with each other and with the public, harnessing aspects of neuroscience and psychology that point toward the deep 'lucidity principles' that underlie skilful communication. (shrink)

This article engages with Julian Culp’s Democratic Education in a Globalized World from the perspective of political philosophy in a global world. The focus is on liberalism. From this angle, Culp’s book entails three important claims. The first is that a right to basic education on the global level exists, i.e. a right to education for everybody independent of one’s nation state. The second claim is that the implementation of this right is not a task for each nation state alone (...) but of world society as a whole. This implies that countries that are able to provide more than basic education to its citizens have a duty to redistribute part of their excess resources to help poor countries secure basic education for their citizens. Culp’s third claim, relevant to the liberal project, is on the kind of education that is supposed to go global. This education should be free-standing, that is, based on political as opposed to perfectionist arguments. This contribution agrees with the first claim, is sceptical regarding the second one, and disagrees with the third one. (shrink)

As is well known, it was only in 1926 that a comprehensive mathematical theory of braids was published—that of Emil Artin. That said, braids had been researched mathematically before Artin’s treatment: Alexandre Theophile Vandermonde, Carl Friedrich Gauß and Peter Guthrie Tait had all attempted to introduce notations for braids. Nevertheless, it was only Artin’s approach that proved to be successful. Though the historical reasons for the success of Artin’s approach are known, a question arises as to whether other approaches to (...) deal with braids existed, approaches that were developed after Artin’s article and were essentially different from his approach. The answer, as will be shown, is positive: Modesto Dedò developed in 1950 another notation for braids, though one, which was afterward forgotten or ignored. This raises a more general question: what was the role of Artin’s notation, or, respectively, Dedò’s, that enabled either the acceptance or the neglect of their theories? More philosophically, can notation be an epistemic technique, prompting new discoveries, or rather, can it also operate an as obstacle? The paper will analyze the method introduced by Dedò to notate braids, and also its history and implications. It aims to show that Dedò, in contrast to Artin, focused on factorizations of braids and the algebraic relations between the operations done on these factorizations. Dedò’s research was done against the background of Oscar Chisini’s research of algebraic curves on the one hand and of Artin’s successful notation of braids on the other hand. Taking this into account, the paper will in addition look into the epistemic role of notation, comparing Dedò’s work with Artin’s, as both presented different notations of braids and their deformations. (shrink)