 One might be tempted to dismiss Goodman’s proposals for their conflicting with ordinary language and musical practice. Yet, it is most important to remember that Goodman is aware of ordinary practice and does not expect it to comply with the philosopher’s technical requirements (as “one hardly expects chemical purity outside the laboratory” [1976, 186]). Nor is he interested in reforming ordinary language: “I am no more recommending that in ordinary discourse we refuse to say that a pianist who misses a note has performed a Chopin Polonaise than that we refuse to call a whale a fish, the earth spherical, or a grayish-pink human white” (Goodman 1976, 187). Indeed, Goodman’s approach to the question of notation is, in an important sense, grounded in previous practice, for a notational system is an acceptable one only when projected from a previous classification of works. Furthermore, the history of an art form may include (as music did) an autographic stage, which only at a later time made room for the establishment of a notation, on the grounds of previous practice. Nor is Goodman’s approach lacking in application to real musical cases, as his discussion of alternative musical notations proves. Without, again, evaluating the different systems of musical notation, Goodman shows how an alternative system, such as the one proposed by John Cage, is not notational, and is indeed in important ways closer to a “sketch,” hence to a drawing, than to a score (Goodman 1976, 187–190).