Academic Report on "Facts and Explanations: The Boundary of Historical Knowledge" by Gang Peng

　　On November 6, 2020, Professor Gang Peng, Vice President of Tsinghua University and Professor in Department of History, School of Humanities at Tsinghua University, was invited by the Institute World History to give an academic report entitled "Facts and Explanations: The Boundary of Historical Knowledge" at Gucheng Conference Hall, IWH.

　　Based on the works and discussions of both ancient and modern masters of Chinese and Western history, Professor Peng summarized and expounded the selective characteristics of historical interpretation and the important characteristics of historical facts. He believed that when historians chose historical facts to construct the historical interpretation they wanted to explain, they often relied on their judgments on the importance of relevant facts to their own topics. As historical interpretation must select historical facts, it is inevitably related with values of historians, which caused the effectiveness of historical interpretation to be questioned by some scholars. Professor Peng further stressed that the basic accomplishment that history researchers must  respect historical facts and must have the courage to give up historical compilation that did not conform to the actual facts.