 Wang developed a critical method he referred to as wen nan 問難 (“questioning and challenging”), built of two parts (Lunheng 28). According to Wang, to discern the truth in the texts of the sages of the past, we begin with an investigation of their words, subjecting them to questioning so as to clarify them. The statements or teachings (yan 言) found in texts that are unclear or interpretively ambiguous, Wang claims, should be subjected to clarifying questioning. This questioning aims to remove any lack of clarity and derive a position that can be evaluated on its merits. Once we have clear and evaluable statements, we can then apply the method of “challenging”, which more directly evaluates statements by presenting them with counterexamples, looking for cases in which they do not hold, testing their plausibility, considering their practicability, etc. Wang offers a general statement of the need for this method in his chapter “Questioning Confucius”, in which he criticizes his contemporaries for their unwillingness to challenge the words of sages of the past: