This reflective commentary on the character and role of methodology in educational and social inquiry recounts my 45-year journey as an applied researcher and evaluator, primarily in the domain of education. The journey starts in graduate school in the early 1970s, where the methodological challenge was to master "the proper methods, properly applied." The journey then continues within the secure walls of the academy, but with many forays out beyond these walls to study innovative educational programs that were part of the U.S. Great Society adventure of that time. This era of the 1970s was also witness to the beginnings of major revolutions in the philosophical frameworks or paradigms that guided mainstream social science. These paradigm revolutions happened at a dizzying pace, surfacing multiple ways of framing meaning and action in social science. Representing alternatives to post-positivism, these paradigms included qualitative constructivism and interpretivism, critical social science, feminist inquiry, critical race theory, post-structuralism, participatory inquiry, and action research, followed by additional years of further paradigm explosions and a consequential turn to mixed methods thinking and doing. This energizing evolution of the character and role of method in educational and social research continues today--one recent addition is labeled post-qualitative research. As a result of this decades-long explosion of paradigms for social science inquiry, today we have a generous plethora of legitimate philosophical frameworks and accompanying methodologies to guide our inquiry practice. Moreover, and in my view more importantly, we have come to realize and appreciate that "methodology--grounded in consequential philosophical assumptions--powerfully sculpts both knowledge and values." That is, method shapes what we learn from a study, and how and why that learning is to be valued. Through a semi-autobiographical account, this reflection offers one historical viewpoint of how and why method matters in contemporary social inquiry.