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This chapter presents the project of creative theorizing in social science. One can approach the topic of theorizing and its current situation with the help of the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The expression context of discovery refers to the stage at which new ideas for how to explain a phenomenon are generated. The context of justification refers to the stage that comes after this, or when these ideas are given the form that they should have when they are presented to the scientific community. The new type of theorizing advocated in this book primarily draws on a plurality of forms of thinking. These forms include analogies, pattern recognition, diagrams, and the like.

This chapter examines how to use analogies, work with metaphors, and recognize and read patterns. Using analogies and metaphors as well as pattern recognition represent three ways of thinking that differ from the classical way of reasoning. One of their strengths is precisely that they are able to proceed in ways that formal logic cannot. Another is that they are helpful in coming up with new approaches to things. They are also especially helpful when used in combination with patient and methodical reasoning. Analogies, metaphors, and pattern recognition have all been used in a wide array of disciplines, from archaeology and biology to economics and law. This means that there exists plenty of experience to draw on for the theorizer.

This chapter examines eight different explanations that scholars have put forward since antiquity for the literary phenomenon of the non-standard gender. More specifically, it investigates why some poets were thought to have greater access to literary authority than others. The explanations range from semantic distinctions to morphology and analogy, metrical convenience, sound, and Greek intertextuality. Informing these various ancient explanations is an assumption that the desire and ability of the most highly respected poets to transform grammatical gender provides tangible evidence of the superior knowledge that these poets possess of the relationship between language and the natural world. Roman scholars attributed to poets the privileged knowledge of an early poetic language, one that had access to mythic and folkloric associations dating back to the period when the Latin language was first coming into existence.

This chapter discusses nondeductive argumentation in classical Chinese philosophy. There are three kinds: paradox, analogy, and appeal to example. Many of the paradoxes of the so-called disputers can be made to seem veridical, or at least veridical in spirit, if interpreted sympathetically. In addition, reasoning by analogy was a crucial mode of deliberation in traditional China. It was one of the hallmarks of Chinese jurisprudence and also figures prominently in early Chinese poetics. Finally, appeals to example are nearly ubiquitous in ancient Chinese philosophy (the most prominent text not to resort to them is Laozi), and this chapter divides the technique into a number of subtypes.