 It is generally recognized today that Chinese philosophy in its classical period was much more preoccupied with articulating and supporting philosophical positions through sustained rational discourse than was previously assumed. Part of the reason for this oversight in decades past was due to the loss or neglect of ancient texts critical to the understanding of early Chinese ideas on language and logic, particularly the writings of the later Mohists, who developed a sophisticated school of philosophical and scientific thought in the third century BCE, but whose writings were rediscovered by philologists only in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1912). In addition to meticulously developing scientific theories about geometry, mechanics, optics, and economics, the later Mohists also articulated detailed philosophical theories in areas we now recognize as logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. Their writings on language and logic are particularly noteworthy, since the later Mohists appeared to treat these disciplines as embodying a subject matter worthy of independent study, and they devoted more attention to issues about language and logic than any other school of thought of the same period. One finds in later Mohist writings, for instance, the only detailed exposition of bian (disputation), the style of argumentation or debate likely practiced in all major schools of thought in ancient China (Fraser 2013). The later Mohists aspired to become more proficient practitioners of bian by taking it more conscionably as an object of study, and carefully articulating, in the context of a general theory, the terms, rules, and methods for its practice.