Five Types of Evidence
Updated 2026-08-16
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The Five Types of Evidence extends Wang Guowei's dual-evidence method, which paired transmitted texts with excavated documents, into a five-source framework adding archaeological objects, pictorial material, and foreign accounts. Its core proposition is that a historical conclusion becomes more reliable as independent evidence types converge on it. The key qualifier is independence and weighting: sources that merely repeat one another add no confirmation, and the types do not carry equal probative weight, so agreement must be assessed rather than counted.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Source inventory: list which of the five evidence types you actually have available to you. - Convergence test: check whether the independent sources genuinely agree or merely repeat one another. - Weight calibration: assign different probative weight to each evidence type before drawing any conclusions.
Anchor fast decisions
Any single source can be forged, biased, or misread, and its errors are invisible from within. When sources produced by different processes, different authors, and different places agree, the chance that they share the same error falls sharply. Convergence therefore raises confidence, while a conflict between types flags exactly where the interpretation needs more work.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%8C%E9%87%8D%E8%AD%89%E6%93%9A%E6%B3%95verified
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