ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter provides an outline of the research methods used throughout this book. The book gives an account of exemplarity that can be roughly described as a practice of giving examples. I wish to argue that exemplarity mediates between singular instances and universal concepts. This book does not seek to provide (deductive) arguments, or at least that is not its primary aim. The main methodological approach consists in an exposition of the account of exemplarity (in Part 2), and then an elaboration of that account based on historical examples (in Part 3), thereby providing a singular account of exemplarity and its particular elaborations through four exemplary studies. The conclusion, Part 4, discusses how the account of exemplarity elaborated in the earlier parts can be self-reflexively applied to this book itself.
