Social Facts and History

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how historians should understand historical texts and social facts under the trend of postmodern thinking. Combined with Durkheim's concept of social facts, it shows that the concept of truth not only affects the rules and academic strategies of arguments in different periods but also affects the way historians process and utilize historical texts. Social fact is the symbol of social existence and Durkheim's perspective of examining society, which helps to understand the internal development of history clearly.