Jim Griesemer papers are typically rich, creative, and challenging. One of my favorite things about a Griesemer paper is that some of the best bits are doing double duty as framing. That is well on display in his 2013 “Formalization and the Meaning of ‘Theory’ in the Inexact Biological Sciences,” where we find epistemological stances operationalized as methodological tools and guides. This makes Griesemer’s papers richly layered. Here, for example, the proximate topic is formalization of theories in exact and inexact sciences. Yet to get there we travel through a pragmatic conception of theories, framed by some of Griesemer’s distinctive stances and approaches to science and philosophy. A reader singularly focused on the end goal risks missing some of the value laid out along the way.