The Whole Art of Detection

By Sherlock Holmes

Edited by
W. Lambert Gardiner

Originally published at Scot and Silicone

http://siliclone.tripod.com/books/whole1.html
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
[1] Structure of Contents
[2] Editor's Preface
[8] Author's Preface

p.1 - CHAPTER 1: OBSERVATION

I. Observation is not simply seeing
II. Observation requires training
III. Observation requires a respect for details
IV. Observation of a person can reveal much personal history
V. Observation can perhaps best be considered as elementary literacy
p.6 - CHAPTER 2: DEDUCTION
I. Deduction involves listing the alternative explanations and
eliminating all but one
II. Metaphors may help understand the process of deduction
III. Deduction is deduction, regardless of the domain in which it is applied
p.11 - CHAPTER 3: INTUITION
I. Intuition is the subtle balance between observation and deduction
II. Theory should not advance beyond the facts
III. Distinguish between information which is central and information
which is peripheral
IV. The pattern of facts can be changed by taking a different point of view
V. Destroy mystique by revealing technique
p.17 - CHAPTER 4: DOCUMENTATION
I. It is important to keep accurate records of your cases
II. It is important to distinguish between complexity and clutter
p.21 - CHAPTER 5: PREPARATION
I. A thorough knowledge of the history of your discipline is important
II. Preparation also involves competence in areas related to your
discipline
III. The best preparation may be relaxation
p.26 - CHAPTER 6: COLLABORATION
I. The capacity to collaborate with colleagues is an important aspect of
detection
II. Collaboration is based on the principle of division of labour
III. Collaboration includes collaboration with self and with adversaries
IV. It is important to balance collaboration with solitude
p.32 - CHAPTER 7: DEDICATION
I. Dedication to detection, in whatever domain, is essential
II. Dedication requires that you turn yourself into an instrument for
detection
III. Dedication requires a lack of concern about what other people think of
you
p.38 - CHAPTER 8: EXPLANATION
I. Explanation may perhaps best be considered as telling a story
II. Explanation may be aided by illustration

p.41 - Appendix 1 - List of Cases and Codes

 Structure of Contents

The eight elements of the whole art of detection are represented as an

octagon rather than simply as a list, in order to illustrate the fact that they are a
system rather than a set. All elements are involved at all times. Each element is
related to all other elements, as symbolized by the links between them. Thus
INTUITION is the balance of OBSERVATION and DEDUCTION, EXPLANATION
is not the fast act of detection but is simultaneous to all other elements,
DOCUMENTATION is PREPARATION by creating your own personal history,
DOCUMENTATION and COLLABORATION are ways of sub-contracting out some
functions so that you are capable of INTUITION, and so on and on.

[1]
 EDITOR'S PREFACE
It is often said that reports of detective cases are like jokes and puzzles. That
is, they can only be enjoyed once. Having got "it", you can not get it again. Not so
with Sherlock Holmes. Would Shakespeare be spoiled if a groundling yelled
"Macbeth done it" during Act 1, Scene 1? I have read the 60 cases of Sherlock
Holmes, published in four books and five compilations of short cases, several times
and enjoyed them each time. (For your convenience they are listed, with the codes
by which I will refer to them, as Appendix 1)

The case which enthralls me the most, however, is a sort of meta-case, which
could be called The Mystery of the Missing Manuscript. A couple of times within
this canon of cases, Sherlock Holmes mentioned a book he was writing which
summarized, in the form of a manual, the principles which guided him during those
cases. When Holmes criticized Watson for sensationalistic aspects of his narratives,
the patient Watson - in one of the few occasions in which he got annoyed at Holmes
- said Why don't you write them yourself? Here is the reply:

I will, my dear Watson, I will. At present, I am, as you know, fairly busy, but
propose to devote my declining years to the composition of a text-book which
shall focus the whole art of detection into one volume [ABBE].

Holmes hints that he was well advanced in his project early in his career:

-- young Trevor began to talk about those habits of observation and inference
which I had already formed into a system -- [GLOR].

Indeed, when Watson first met Holmes, he had already published a

preliminary version, entitled The Book of Life, which expounded on the Science of
Deduction and Analysis [STUD].

We know Holmes only through the writings of Watson, just as we know

Socrates only through the writings of Plato. We tend to consider those "middle-men"
as the world's foremost authority on their subjects. However, each person is the

[2]
world's foremost authority on themselves. Whereas Holmes and Watson had a long
and fruitful collaboration, there are large periods of the life of Holmes to which
Watson did not have access. The most dramatic period was, of course, the "Great
Hiatus", between 1891, when Watson assumed that Holmes had died [FINA], and
1894, when Holmes reappeared disguised as a book-seller [EMPT]. Even during the
period of their collaboration (March 1881 - August 1914), they were not inseparable.
In the very first case, we learn that Holmes

had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I (Watson) arose in the
morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemistry laboratory, sometimes
in the dissecting rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to
take him into the lowest portions of the city [STUD].

In a later case, Watson points out that he had not seen Holmes for some days
[3GAB]. At one point, Watson was living not at 221 B Baker Street but in his own
rooms at Queen Anne Street [ILLU]. In the two cases, written by Holmes himself,
Holmes explained that the good Watson had deserted me for a wife [BLAN] and
that the good Watson had passed beyond my ken [LION].

Watson is most unreliable as a witness of the late stages of the career of

Holmes. As he notes himself - I have seldom drawn my cases from the later phases
of my friend's career [ILLU]. He claims that Holmes moved to the Sussex Downs to
raise bees and that he published a book entitled Practical Handbook of Bee Culture,
with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen [LAST].

I would modestly suggest that there was more afoot than Watson knew. It
seems highly unlikely that someone with the mind of Holmes would retire quietly to
the country in his early fifties and raise bees. On a number of occasions, Holmes
gave us insight into his mind:

My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not

connected up with the work for which it was built [WIST].

[3]
 To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It
racks itself to pieces [DEVI].

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the

most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my
most proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I
abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exultation [SIGN].

Hence the cocaine. I can't live without brainwork. What else is there to live
for? [SIGN].

Watson himself recognized that his companion's brain was so abnormally

active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which to work [MISS]
and conceded that his razor brain could be blunted and rusted with inaction
[VALL]. Does this sound like a mind content to retire to a little farm of my dreams
and raise bees? [CREE].

Watson claimed that Holmes disliked the country:

--- neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him.
He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments
stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour
or suspicion of unsolved crime [CARD].

Unless Holmes, with his considerable competence in chemistry had found

some way to synthesize cocaine out of pollen, he would have been strung out on
cocaine within weeks of moving to the country. Since he did indeed retire to the
country, there must have been something to occupy his active mind. I contend that
he retired to the country to write his magnum opus - The Whole Art of Detection -
as he promised. The bee book was simply a front to justify his many visits to the
local library and to distract, as a red herring, the less active mind of the solid, yet
stolid, Watson.

[4]
 Why would he delude his faithful colleague for those many years? I humbly
suggest that he did not want to embarrass his friend with his low opinion of the
accounts of the cases. He had indeed expressed such an opinion to Watson's face in
occasional flashes of anger:

You have attempted to tinge it (detection) with romanticism, which produces

much the same effect as if you had worked a love-story or an elopement into
the fifth proposition of Euclid [SIGN].

--- you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of
your statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon
record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only
notable feature about the thing [COPP].

However, the carefully documented publication of this opinion is an entirely

different matter. There is some evidence that Holmes was somewhat embarrassed
by those "adventures" as told by Watson. Soon after they met, Holmes was already
complaining that

There is no crime to detect or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive
so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it [STUD].

Certainly, after he had defeated the only criminal who was almost a match
for him in intellect - his arch-rival, Professor Moriarty - there was little left to
challenge him.

From the point of view of the criminal expert, London has become a
singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor
Moriarty [NORW].

What Holmes was really interested in were the larger mysteries of nature.
The criminal cases were simply puzzle-solving exercises at a local and recent level.
He made this most clear in practically the last statement he made to Watson before
his disappearance.

[5]
 Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by Nature
rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of
society is responsible [FINA].

That "of late" is a trifle suspicious since, even on their very first case, Holmes
argues that One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature
[STUD]. I would contend that Holmes had already, unknown to Watson, worked on
those larger mysteries, that his disappearance was less due to the avoidance of
Professor Moriarty's gang than to the avoidance of Watson and the relatively trivial
day-by-day problems into which he was sucked, and that his "retirement" was to
enable him to focus on those larger issues.

During a sabbatical in the 1990-1991 academic year, I was able to pursue my

theories. Following the first clue that the farm to which Holmes retired was five
miles from Eastbourne [LAST], I took a train from London to Eastbourne. Using
two other clues - that the farm commanded a great view of the Channel and that it
was a half-mile from The Gables, a famous coaching establishment [LION], by
triangulation I zeroed in to its approximate location. Taking the advice of Holmes
himself, I inquired at the local public-houses about the farm [SOLI]. A regular at
the third pub I entered, who fancied himself as a local historian, directed me to it.
Fortunately, it neither continued its career as a farm or evolved, as had 221B Baker
Street, into a sort of shrine to the memory of Holmes-and-Watson but was being
rented to tourists. Since it was off-season, I was able to rent it for the month of
March 1991 and pursue my investigations at my leisure.

The attic revealed nothing. An apocryphal manuscript of Watson, describing

a case with Sigmund Freud, was ostensibly found in an attic.1 However, that was
too obvious for a mind like Holmes. Following his advice once again, I measured the

1
Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-per-cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.
New York: Ballantine, 1974.

[6]
height of the farm-house, the height of the rooms, and the thickness of the ceilings
[SIGN].

Simple subtraction revealed missing space and pointed to a false ceiling.

Taking my cue from Holmes, I will not describe my emotion but simply state the
fact that, in the space above the false ceiling, there lay my quarry - the manuscript
of The Whole Art of Detection. What follows is a transcription of this wonderful
document. I have taken the liberty of adding footnotes to place it in its modern
context, trusting that Holmes would have approved since he conceded that even he
had little capacity to foresee the future [HOUN].

[7]
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Having retired, I now have the leisure to write my long-promised magnum
opus, in which I pull together into a manual the various principles I have derived
during a long career as a consulting detective.

First, let me make clear that those principles do not apply only to the solution
of crimes. They are the general principles of scientific method, which apply to all
research.2 My little exercises, as documented by my friend and colleague, Dr. John
H. Watson, are merely illustrations of those principles in action, within a domain in
which they can be concretely demonstrated. The various sciences differ only
superficially in their technologies but not in their basic principles, as expounded
here. Observation is observation, regardless of what is being observed. If what you
must observe is too far away to observe clearly, then you need a telescope to bring it
close enough, if what you must observe is too small, then you need a microscope to
make it large enough.3 The principles of observation (see Chapter 1), despite those
superficial differences, apply equally well to the work of detectives, astronomers,
and biologists. Deduction (see Chapter 2) puts content into context, regardless of the
type of content.

However, since all you know of my work is that corpus of 60 cases, which
Watson published in a forty-year period between 1887 and 1927, I will use them to

2
The generality of the principles expounded in The Whole Art of Detection is attested by the fact that the cases
have since been used in teaching within such a wide variety of disciplines: in scientific methods [Faia, Jean E.,
Sherlock Holmes in the classroom. Science Scope, November-December 1988, 12 (3), Pages 6-81]; in geography
[Tuan, Yi Fu, The landscapes of Sherlock Holmes. Journal of Geography, March-April, 1985, 84 (2), Pages 56-60]; in
history [Vacha, J. E., Holmes for historians- Sherlock and the elusive quest. OCSS Review, Spring 1988, 24 (1), Pages
28-34]; in nature studies [Ferbert, Mary Lou, Nature in the city. Science and Children, November-December 1981,
19 (3), Pages 1012]; in chemistry [Reeves, Robert, Filtrates and Residues. Journal of Chemical Education,
December 1985, 62 (12), Pages 1060-1068]; in medicine [Sheldon, Stephen H. & Peter A. Noronha, Using classic
mystery stories in teaching. Academic Medicine, April 1990, 65 (4), Pages 234-235]; and in political science [Ward,
Veronica & John Orbell, Sherlock Holmes as a social scientist. Political Science Teacher, Fall 1988, 1(4), Pages 15-
18].
3
This principle can be extended to a tool not available to Holmes (though it is fascinating to speculate what he
would have done with it). If what you must observe is too complex to observe clearly, then you need a computer
to make it simple enough.

[8]
illustrate the principles. It is important to keep in mind that they apply to those
larger issues in which the investigator asks questions of nature. From time to time,
I will make this point clear. You may consider that, by doing so, I stray from my
area of expertise, but I assure you that Watson captured only a limited aspect of my
investigations.

Since my revelations here would be somewhat embarrassing to my good

friend, I will not publish them until his death. In case, perchance, by some accident,
I precede him in that final journey, I will hide this manuscript. There is no one else
to whom I can entrust it. Watson attested to my solitary nature, and no one has
replaced him. It should take some time to find it. A detective is essentially a
searcher and any child who has played hide-and-seek knows that the good seekers
are also the good hiders. However, anyone who has a deep interest in my work, as
described by Watson, has sufficient clues in that corpus to find it. Should there be
no such person, then it will indeed never be exposed to the light of public scrutiny.
This is entirely appropriate, since it will be obvious that my work has not generated
enough interest to justify this further imposition on the valuable time of a future
generation of readers.

[9]
 Chapter One:

Observation
I. Observation is not simply seeing

The foundation of detection - and scientific method in general - is observation.

Except for a few unfortunates, we all see. However, only a few of us observe. I made
a concrete example of this distinction, when I demonstrated that Watson had seen
the steps leading from the hall to the rooms we shared at 221 B Baker Street
hundreds of times but had not observed that there were 17 of them [SCAN]. He
saw, but he did not observe. In reporting another case, Watson admits:

I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from
his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened, but
what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused
and grotesque [REDH].

Watson expressed some surprise that I knew Miss Mary Sutherland was a
short-sighted typist. This was visible to me but invisible to him.

Not invisible, but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and so
you missed all that was important [IDEN].

While Watson was seeing her clothes (and gave me a description of them
which could have graced a fashion magazine), I was observing the indentations on
her wrists and on the sides of her nose.

When Inspector Gregory expressed surprise that I found a matchstick in the

mud which he had overlooked, I replied: I only saw it because I was looking for it
[SILV] and again when Inspector Martin expressed surprise that I noticed a bullet
hole, I could only answer that I noticed it because I looked for it [DANC], You are
more likely to find something when you are looking for it. The scientist is, after all,

1
a seeker rather than a finder. It is an active process. There is nothing to be learned
by staring [STUD].

II. Observation requires training

After Watson and I had examined together the apartment of Dr. Grimesby
Roylott, we had the following conversation:

You have evidently seen more in those rooms than was visible to me. No but I
fancy that I may have deduced a little more, I imagine that you saw all that I
did [SPEC].

The difference between Watson and me is that I have trained myself to

observe. In answer to the incredulous comments of clients about some little
demonstration of the science of observation, I have said

I have trained myself to see what others overlook [IDEN].

I see no more than you but I have trained myself to notice what I see [BLAN].

Such demonstrations are impressive only because, with considerable

training, observation with me is second nature [STUD].

III. Observation requires a respect for details

My method is based on the observation of trifles [BOSC], Watson once

pointed out that I had an extraordinary genius for minutiae [SIGN] and I once
stated that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains [STUD]. It's a very bad
definition but it does apply to detective work . Clues, which contributed to the
solution of some of my cases, include:

A letter in which the name was in blacker ink than the address [TWIS]. This
indicated that whoever wrote it was unfamiliar with the address, and was therefore
not the husband of the receiver. While looking for the address, the name had dried
itself, whereas the address had been blotted.

2
 Roy, a wolfhound belonging to Professor Presbury, tried to bite him [CREE].
The professor, after taking monkey glands in an attempt to acquire eternal youth,
had regressed to our ancestors and had been teasing the dog.

Parsley on top of the butter which had sunk a certain distance on a hot day
[SIXN], a mark on the parapet of a bridge [THOR], and many other apparently
insignificant observations were clues contributing to the solution of other cases.
Those are all trifles but significant trifles. Nothing, however small, can be dismissed
as insignificant. My exploration of apparent trifles include ashes, ears, tyres, and
perfumes as indicated, respectively, by the following quotations:

--- written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe,
cigar, and cigarette tobacco [BOSC],

I have made a special study of cigar ashes - indeed I have written a little
monograph on the subject [STUD]. This monograph is called Upon the
Distinctions Between the Ashes of Various Tobaccos [SIGN].

Each ear is as a rule quite distinctive, and differs from all other ones. In last
year's Anthropological Journal you will find two short monographs from my
pen upon the subject [CARD].

I am familiar with forty-two different impressions left by tyres. This, as you

see, is a Dunlop with a patch upon the outer cover. Heidegger's tyres were
Palmer's, leaving longitudinal stripes [PRIO].

There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal

expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more
than once within my experience depended upon their prompt recognition
[HOUN].

IV. Observation of a person can reveal much personal history

The history of people are engraved in their bodies and reflected in their clothes.
When first introduced to a person, you can tell much about his/her past history and

3
present profession. Such a precise first impression is not obvious. You have to know
where to look and what to look for.

Always look at the hands first, Watson. Then cuffs, trouser-knees, and boots.
Very curious knuckles which can only be explained by the mode of progression
observed by --- [CREE].

By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by

the callosities of his fore-finger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs -
by each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed [STUD].

I demonstrated to Watson by describing his recent personal history when I

deduced from his dress that he had spent the day at his club [HOUN]. The most
revealing part of a person is, of course, the face. "Reading faces" is another part of
that literacy required by a detective.

The features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his
emotions, and yours are faithful servants [CARD].

My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the
first quality of a criminal investigator that he can see through a disguise
[HOUN].

This would appear obvious. However, it is only obvious after you have revealed
what you know:

You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick: and if I
show you too much my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I
am a very ordinary individual after all [STUD].

However, since there is enough mystery in the world without creating that false
mystery of mystique, it has always been my habit to hide none of my methods,
either from my friends or from anyone who might take an intelligent interest in
them [REIG]. The small price I pay for this candour is to be greeted - after revealing
my method - with remarks like I thought at first that you had done something

4
clever, but I see that there was nothing in it after all [REDH] and For a moment I
thought you had done something clever [NAVA].

V. Observation can perhaps best be considered as elementary literacy

Observation could be considered as a primitive form of literacy, in which one

"reads" the information contained in the environment - in foot-prints [VALL] and
tyre-marks [PRIO], in dust [STUD] and ashes [BOSC], in clothes [CREE] and faces
[CARD], However, knowing the importance of communication in human affairs,
both legitimate and criminal, I have not neglected traditional literacy. Thus, I have
explored the typewriter, the use of secret writing, English charters, and the
Chaldean roots of the Cornish language, as indicated, respectively, by the following
quotations:

It is a curious thing that a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a

man's hand-writing. --- I think of writing another little monograph one of those
days on the typewriter and its relation to crime [IDEN].

I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and am myself the author
of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyze one hundred and
sixty separate ciphers [DANC]. Because there are many ciphers which I would
read as easily as I do the apocrypha of the agony column - such crude devices
amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it [VALL].

Sherlock Holmes was pursuing some laborious researches in early English

charters [3STU].

The ancient Cornish language had also arrested his attention, and he had, I
remember, conceived the idea that it was akin to the Chaldean, and had been
largely derived from the Phoenecian traders in tin [DEVI].

5
 Chapter Two

Deduction
I. Deduction involves listing the alternative explanations and eliminating
all but one

This principle is so basic that I have repeated it, with minor variations, in a
number of cases:

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth [BERY].

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth
[SIGN].

--- when you have eliminated, the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth [SIGN].

--- when you have eliminated all which is impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth [BLAN].

I now proceeded, using my familiar method of logical analysis, to narrow down

the possible solutions [BLAN].

It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it
wrong [PRIO].

One should always look for a possible alternative and provide against it [BLAC].

How did you know it was there?

Because I knew it was nowhere else [SECO].

6
 II. Metaphors may help understand the process of deduction

Watson gamely struggles with various metaphors to describe the process of

deduction, so that the unfamiliar can be illuminated by analogy with the familiar.

Deduction is the unravelling of a tangled ball of twine.

There's plenty of thread, no doubt, but I can't get the end of it into my hand
[TWIS].

--- to devise some common thread upon which they might all hang [MUSG].

--- you broke the thread of my thoughts. --- I have now in my hands all the
threads which have formed such a tangle [STUD].

Different threads, but leading up to the same tangle [RUDC].

There is a thread here which we have not yet grasped and which might lead us
through the tangle [DEVI].

It is a tangled skein, you understand, and I am looking for a loose end [CREE].

There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life,
and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it [STUD].

Deduction is the forging of a chain of links.

It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true [REDL].

The last link. My case is complete [STUD].

I only require a few missing links to have an entirely connected case [SIGN].

It's the chain between them that we are going to trace [VALL].

It was by concealing such links in the chain that Watson was enabled to produce
his meretricious finales [BLAN].

When you follow two chains of thought, Watson, you shall find a point of
intersection which will approximate the truth [LADY].

7
Deduction is the playing of a game of cards.

We are getting some cards in our hand. --- it is not an easy one to play
[SHOS].

We have added one card to our hand [SHOS].

Alas that I should have to show my hand so when I tell my own story
[BLAN].

Each metaphor, I must confess, he took from my own mouth - or, in some
cases, put into my mouth. The thread metaphor is so mixed that it, in itself, is a
tangled ball. I further confess that the metaphors got mixed, with two or more
metaphors within a single case - indeed, even within a single paragraph. Metaphors
are helpful aids to make concrete what is basically an abstract process. However,
now that I have the leisure to contemplate my career, I believe that the most useful
metaphor for what I was doing is that I was telling a story. Since this metaphor
applies not so much to deduction per se but to the entire process of detection, I will
explore it at more length in Chapter 8 - Explanation.

III. Deduction is deduction, regardless of the domain in which it is applied

The principles of deductive reasoning are independent of the content of the

propositions.4 What is being expounded here is not the principles of detection as
applied to crime but the general principles of scientific research.

Watson claimed that: The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute
reasoner, when he (that is, I) became a specialist in crime [SCAN]. I modestly agree
about the stage but not about the larger stage of science.

4
The following short course in logic may help make this clear. A proposition is anything which can be said to be
true or false. Imagine two propositions - P and Q - in an empty universe. There are four possible states of affairs:
P&Q or P¬Q or notP&Q or notP¬Q. If P, then Q eliminates the second alternative. P eliminates the third and fourth
alternatives. Therefore Q must be true since there is only one alternative left, in which Q is true. The argument - if
P, then Q and P, therefore Q - is true regardless of whether P and Q are statements about astronomy or biology or
crime.

8
 I have, on a number of occasions, described detection as a science:

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the
same cold, unemotional manner [SIGN].

Dr. Mortimer insulted me by placing me second to Monsieur Bertillon,

because the latter appealed to his precisely scientific mind, whereas I was merely a
practical man of affairs [HOUN]. I took offence at that because he failed to
recognize that my reputation for practicality was based exactly on my precise
scientific mind. There is nothing as practical as a good theory. Later in the case, I
teased him by referring to myself as a scientific expert and denouncing his appeals
to the supernatural.

Detection is not an ignoble profession , as Colonel Emsworth dismissed it,

any more than science is. [BLAN]. It is merely the application of those principles to
the domain of crime. I am not being facetious when I use the language of science:

I think there is a small experiment which we may try tomorrow, Watson,

which may throw some light on the matter [SHOS].

There is, alas, some truth in the accusations of some clients that those cases
were mere intellectual puzzles [SUSS] or little puzzles [HOUN].5 I found them
useful exercises for helping evolve my science of detection.

Perhaps my association with Watson made me sensitive to the analogy

between the detective and the doctor. There is, of course, the overlap of the two
disciplines. I once did considerable research into matters of a medico-criminal
aspect [DYIN]. There are many obvious topics within this domain - the effects of

5
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Second Edition) [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970],
Thomas Kuhn argues that the progress of science is not a gradual evolution, as traditionally thought, but a series of
revolutions. Each science is organized around a paradigm, until it is displaced by a better paradigm. Thus, in
physics, the paradigm of Ptolemy was replaced by that of Newton, which was in turn replaced by that of Einstein.
Within each paradigm, much of science is indeed a matter of "puzzle-solving".

9
various poisons, the damage as a result of blows to the head, the diminished
responsibility of criminals with various diseases, and so on.

However, this is not what I am arguing here. When a client appeared to be

more mad than criminal, I quipped: This is Baker Street, not Harley Street [SHOS].
However, the methods applied in both streets are the same. This was well captured
by Culverton Smith:

He is an amateur of crime, as I am of disease. For him, the villain, for me, the
microbe. There are my prisons (pointing to a row of bottles and jars). Among
those gelatine cultivations some of the very worst offenders in the world are
now doing time [DYIN].

Mr. Gibson, the Gold King, appropriately made the analogy, when he told me:
You're like a surgeon who wants every symptom before he can give his diagnosis
[THOR].

10
 Chapter Three

Intuition
I. Intuition is the subtle balance between observation and deduction

The essence of scientific method is the combination of observation and

deduction.6 However, there is a subtle third skill of maintaining an appropriate
balance between the two. Whereas observation and deduction can be taught, this
third skill - let us call it intuition - can not be reduced to a series of principles. The
core of science is art. However, one can learn certain guidelines which will increase
the probability of acquiring this skill.

Doing science is like following a recipe for hippopotamus pie, which begins First,
you catch a hippopotamus. After you have caught your hippopotamus - that is,
decided on your hypothesis - then you can follow the steps of research methods
much as you can follow the instructions in a recipe. However, there are no clear
principles for discovering that tentative theory, called a hypothesis, which makes
sense of the facts. However, certain guidelines increase the probability of doing so.
You are more likely to catch a hippopotamus if you know their habits and hang
around their habitats.

Intuition is not some mystical property that some fortunate people magically
acquire. It is the result of considerable experience. When describing intuition, one is
tempted to use the metaphor of smell. One sniffs a rat on encountering a significant
clue and one smells a red herring on encountering a misleading clue. Chapter 1:

6
The late Victorian era, as represented so well by Sherlock Holmes, was probably the last time we had full
confidence in objective science. Since then, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has demonstrated a limitation of
observation and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem has demonstrated a limitation of reason. Confidence in the
technology which emerged from objective science has also waned. It received a major blow at 10:40 p.m. on 12
April 1912, when the iceberg (representing nature) sunk the Titanic (representing science-and-technology). Soon
after, the technology-enhanced slaughter of the First World War (1914-1918) led many people to question the
value of science and technology.

11
Observation focused on the modality of sight. However, it is important to remember
that observation requires all sensory modalities. You will remember that I acquired
important clues by smelling the lips of the corpse in one case [STUD] and by
identifying a perfume in another [HOUN]. Toby, the mutt with an educated nose,
helped us follow trails in a couple of cases [STUD, SIGN]. Our species has lost much
of the power of this sense by getting uppity - that is, by standing on our hind legs,
we remove ourselves from the source of smells. You will note, however, how often
Watson described me as lying on the ground in search of clues. Smell is a very
primitive sense with its receptors in the old brain. It is not surprising, then, that it
is linked to intuition, which is apparently mysterious only because we are out of
touch with it. It is embedded in our unconscious rather than our conscious minds.
Perhaps it is not surprising then that detectives are often said to be "nosy".7

II. Theory should not advance beyond the facts

In general, observation yields facts and deduction yields theories. The

appropriate balance of observation and deduction involves an appropriate
relationship between fact and theory, Throughout the canon, I advocate time and
again that theory should not outrace fact:

I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit
facts [SCAN].

We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is
always an advantage. We had formed no theories- We were simply there to
observe and to draw inferences from our observations [CARD].

Now I make a point of never having any prejudices and of following docilely
wherever fact may lead me --- [REIG].

7
Researchers are also often described as "nosy". My mother once asked me what I was doing. I grandiosely replied
that I was trying to understand how the universe worked. She put me back in my place by saying: Ah, ye're just
nosy!

12
 It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts [SECO].

No data yet --- It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the
evidence. It biases the judgment [STUD].

The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of
our profession [VALL].

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly
twisting them around to fit your theories [WIST].

III. It is important to distinguish between information which is central and

information which is peripheral

Usually one has too little information. Data! data! data! --- I can't make bricks
without clay [COPP]. However, sometimes one has too much information.

It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for
the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has
been so uncommon, so complete, and of such personal importance to so many
people that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and
hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact - of absolute,
undeniable fact - from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then,
having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what
inferences may be drawn, and which are the special points upon which the whole
mystery turns [SILV].

The principle difficulty in your case -- lay in the fact of there being too much
evidence. What was vital was overlaid and hidden by what was irrelevant. Of all
the facts which were presented to us we had to pick those which we deemed to be
essential, and then piece them together in their order, so as the reconstruct this
very remarkable chain of events [NAVA].

It is necessary in those cases to tease out the facts which are central to the case:

13
 It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize out
of a number of facts which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy
and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated [REIG].

--- trying to separate those which were crucial from others which were merely
incidental [CROO].

--- let us try to realize what we do know so as to make the most of it, and to
separate the essential from the accidental [PRI0].

IV. The pattern of facts can be changed by taking a different point of view

Each shift in point of view is like a shake of a kaleidoscope. One must keep
shaking until a pattern which makes sense emerges:

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing -- it may seem to point very

straight to one thing, but if you shift your point of view a little, you may find it
pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different
[BOSC].

--- it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at
everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered
houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only
thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation, and of the impunity
with which crime may be committed there [COPP].

When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning
becomes a clue to the truth [THOR].

Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who when he had an unsolved problem
upon his mind would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it
over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view, until he had
either fathomed it, or convinced himself that his data were insufficient [TWIS].

14
 V. Destroy mystique by revealing technique

There is enough genuine mystery without introducing false mystique. I

constantly attempt to destroy mystique. The price I pay is that, after I have
explained it, it is dismissed as obvious. When a supernatural explanation was
suggested in a number of cases, I said

--- we must exhaust all natural explanations before we fall back on a such a
theory as this [LAST]

The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply [SUSS].

A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable
a thing [HOUN].

Watson was constantly attributing superhuman powers to me, and I was as

constantly reminding him that they were merely human. When he was convinced
that I had eyes on the back of my head, I pointed out that, on the contrary, I had a
well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me [HOUN].

As a rule ---------- the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be.
It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a
commonplace face is the most difficult to identify [REDH].

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more
obvious, as a rule, is the motive [IDEN].

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace

crime is often the most mysterious, because it presents no new or special
features from which deductions may be drawn [STUD].

The more outré and grotesque an incident is, the more carefully it deserves to be
examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is when duly
considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it
[HOUN].

15
It is only the colourless, uneventful case which is hopeless [SHOS].

16
 Chapter Four

Documentation
I. It is important to keep accurate records of your cases

Watson refers repeatedly to my records. He refers to the index in which I kept

records of people and places [SILV], to my records of crime [FIVE], to my
commonplace books containing cuttings [ENGR, MUSG], old notes [STOC], scrap-
books and reference books, including an index of biographies [EMPT], row of year-
books and dispatch-cases full of documents [VEIL], his own dispatch-case full of
documents [THOR], and index volumes containing records of old cases, mixed with
the accumulated information of a lifetime [SUSS].

From time to time, he mentions my activities with respect to those records -

cross-indexing my records of crime, pasting cuttings in my common place books, and
classifying past results, and makes snide remarks about how untidy they are.
However, at no point, does he describe my system of documentation as a whole. It is
based on the general principle which follows:

Keeping content in records keeps your mind clear for putting content into context.

--- a man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that
he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his
library, where he can get it if he wants it [FIVE].

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you
have to stock it with such furniture as you choose - A fool takes in all the
lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might
be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other
things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful
workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic, He

17
 will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work ---
there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget
something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore,
not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones [STUD].

The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and is able to argue with
an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will
drive it all out of his head once more [HOUN].

The satellite brain of your library is useless, however, if you can not get the
information you want when you want it. Hence the need for organizing and cross-
indexing it.8 The making of records should be done on the spot, as soon as the
information is available, so that it will not be erased or distorted by the passage of
time. Watson describes how I jot down figures and memoranda [SIGN] and write
notes on my shirt cuff [NAVA].

Inspector Mason expressed amazement that I would know the name of the
manufacturer of a gun used in a common case: Do you carry the names of all the
gun makers in the world in your memory? [VALL]. Not intentionally - this is the
type of trivia to be sub-contracted out to the satellite brain. However, some of it
sticks - to my embarrassment - one can hardly prevent some such stuff sticking as
one browses through the files. Sometimes our 'forgetory' does not work. My
favourable comment on Bennett's note-keeping was sincere [CREE]. However, when
I expressed admiration of the stockbroker clerk for memorizing the stocks, I was of
course flattering him for my own purposes [STOC]. Such information which varies
from day to day is a sure candidate for the satellite brain. When Watson failed to
recognize the name 'Killer' Evans, I said It is not part of your profession to carry
about a portable Newgate Calendar in your memory [3GAR]. Nor, I must add, is it

8
My own system is called the Siliclone - that is, a silicon clone of myself. It consists of ten HyperCard stacks -
labelled Notes, Quotes, Anecdotes, Images, Sources, Resources, Speak, Listen, Write, Read. It is represented by ten
drawers in a filing cabinet (with ten drawers corresponding to those stacks) with an in-out box on top. Clicking on
the out-box enables me to pull out relevant Notes, Quotes, Anecdotes, etc. on the various subjects in which I am
interested. Such a system was not available to Sherlock Holmes but I am sure he would have loved it!

18
part of my profession. However, such information should be in my satellite memory
to find when I need it.

II. It is important to distinguish between complexity and clutter

The solving of crimes in particular - and the asking of questions of nature in

general - requires the capacity to manage complexity.9 Too often, apparent
complexity is simply clutter. There is, however, genuine complexity. Some systems
have many elements with myriad relationships between them. It is important to
remove the clutter of content, so that one can see clearly to put this content into
context, in order to manage the genuine complexity.

I have, on a number of occasions likened my arch-rival, Professor Moriarty, to a

spider at the centre of its web:

He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a
thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them [FINA].

--- dozens of exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the
web where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking [VALL]

Watson uses a suspiciously similar metaphor for me, though he has the grace not
to mention the spider:

He (me) loved to lie at the very centre of five millions of people, with his
filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little
rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime [CARD].

9
Information overload is often described as the problem of the 1990s. I was well into a project on information
overload, when I realized that it was a pseudo-problem. It is like looking at a magnificent smorgasbord and yelling
"overload". It is overload only if you think you have to eat it all. In our outside-in educational system, we are
convinced that being educated is assimilating information from our environment. Our modern environment is so
rich in information that we despair. In an inside-out education system, we would be delighted to have such a rich
environment to pull out more of the human potential. Underlying the pseudo-problem of information overload,
however, there lies a genuine problem of the management of complexity. We have to develop a sophisticated,
subtle subjective map to match this rich objective world. Since then, I have realized that my various intellectual
strategies are different techniques for managing complexity.

19
 It is in this capacity to manage complexity that the truly intelligent - like myself
and my near-equal, Professor Moriarty - can be distinguished from the merely
competent. Watson's favourite metaphor for detection as the unravelling of a ball of
thread is obviously inadequate. We are dealing not with a linear thread but with a
web or net, in which the various threads are tied together into a system.

20
 Chapter Five

Preparation
I. One important aspect of preparation is a thorough knowledge of the
history of your discipline

Soon after I met Watson, I explained to him my profession:

They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my
knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight [STUD].

When he expressed wonder at not being able to solve a crime which I had solved,
even though he had heard all that I had heard, I pointed out that he was

Without, however, the knowledge of pre-existing cases which serves me so well

[NOBL].

Watson subsequently described a number of cases where I was enabled in

solving a case by analogy with previous parallel cases.

It reminds me of the circumstances attendant on the death of Van Jansen, in

Utrecht, in the year '34. Do you remember the case, Gregson?
No, sir.
Read it up - you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all
been done before [STUD].

Or, to use the language that I now prefer, there are only so many stories. When
consulted by Franqois le Villard, I was able to help him solve a crime by referring
him to two parallel cases. I pointed out that he had two of the three qualities
necessary for the ideal detective: He has the power of observation and that of
deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge and, later in the same case, I got some
insight into it by parallel cases in India and in Senegambia [SIGN].

21
 When Colonel Damery asked me about Baron Gruber, I knew of course of the
case [ILLU]. On finding that Inspector MacDonald did not know of Jonathan Wild,
the master 18th century criminal, I said

Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut
yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime.
Everything comes in circles - even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the
hidden force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and his
organization on a fifteen per cent commission [VALL].

Preparation shades into documentation, since my own previous cases are part of
the history of crime:

You will find parallel cases, if you consult my index, in Andover in '77 and there
was something of the sort at the Hague last year [IDEN].

II. Preparation also involves competence in areas related to your discipline

I have a plethora of skills in related disciplines. My skill as an actor enables me

to assume disguises so that I could collect evidence which would have been denied
me if recognized [MAZA, SIGN, SILV] and to practice malingering so successfully
that Watson was convinced that I was about to die [DYIN].

A set of skills enables me to reconstruct stories from the debris which the events
leave behind. Hence I have learned to identify the various ashes of cigars and
cigarettes, the various perfumes, and the treads of various bicycle tires. The import-
ance of communication has resulted in my exploration of secret writings, the
decipher-ing of ciphers, the acquisition of foreign languages, the knowledge of
English charters, and the idiosyncrasies of typewriters. As a trained athlete, I have
certain motor skills of value to a consulting detective - it was my knowledge of
baritsu, the Japanese system of wrestling, which enabled me to escape the clutches
of Professor Moriarty [EMPT], and my good physical conditioning which enabled me

22
to perch behind a carriage in order to follow a suspect, and my agile fingers which
enabled me to crack a safe.

Effective criminologists and criminals both leap on any new technology as soon
as it emerges because it gives them an edge. He who hesitates, loses. You will notice
that I talk approvingly of a number of recent technologies, and learn not only how to
use them but how to counter the abuse of them.

The solutions to many of my cases were due to my understanding and use of a

number of recent technologies - of the typewriter [IDEN], of the gramophone
[MAZA], of enlarged photographs [LION], of the microscope [SHOS], and in cases
too numerous to list of the telegraph. Detectives and criminals have always been
with us and always will. The main difference in their eternal duel of wits from
generation to generation is in the technologies they use, rather than in the basic
principles of detection (and, by implication, of escaping detection) which are
expounded here.

New technology changes the rules. For example, the task of assigning someone
to copy out the Encyclopaedia Britannica would easily be recognized as a ruse to
keep him busy elsewhere with the invention of the photocopier [REDH]. The same
invention of course makes the copying of the Naval Treaty a ridiculous task and we
would have been less confident that the crisis was over when it was recovered
[NAVA]. It is only in such cases, when technology makes a ploy obsolete, that the
plots thin.

III. The best preparation may be relaxation

A "related" discipline - whatever your domain - is psychology. Every discipline

involves people and thus an understanding of people is an aid in all disciplines,
Indeed, the whole art of deduction could be considered as applied psychology.
Although I have had no formal training in psychology, I have taught myself many of
its principles.

23
 It was this knowledge of psychology which alerted me to the need to be prepared
but not to over-prepare. After working diligently on a problem in one's conscious
mind, there comes a point at which it is necessary to relax and allow the
unconscious mind to take over. Watson has referred to my capacity to relax - to
spend a leisurely afternoon engrossed in listening to music [REDH] and to become
immersed in some - to Watson - abstruse topic:

One of the most remarkable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes was his power of
throwing his brain out of action and switching all his thoughts on to lighter
things whenever he had convinced himself that he could no longer work to
advantage. I remember that during the whole of that memorable day he lost
himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of
Lassus [BRUC].

Serendipity plays an important role in the history of detection, within crime and
science in general. That is, some trivial environmental event triggers a solution
which suddenly emerges from the unconscious mind. This usually happens when
the person is relaxing. Archimedes in his bath-tub, when the overflow of water
produces the principle of specific gravity; Newton under an apple tree, when a
falling apple triggered the universal theory of gravity. Serendipity, however, strikes
only the prepared mind. Both Archimedes and Newton had been working on their
respective problems for some time and were therefore sensitized to their solutions.
There is no point in sitting in bath-tubs and under apple trees waiting for
inspiration without having shed the prerequisite perspiration.

When I found a discharged servant with a grievance, I said: I call it luck, but it
would not have come my way had I not been looking for it [WIST]. I got a new
hypothesis of the location of Jonathan Small only after, as I explained to Watson, I
gave my mind a thorough rest by plunging into a chemical analysis. One of our
greatest statesmen has said that a change of work is the best rest [SIGN].

24
 Some of my hobbies had apparently nothing to do with detective skills - they are
avocations rather than vocations. However, they do serve a function. They enable
me to relax and, in this relaxation, incubation occurs. Music obviously serves this
function. It would stretch the imagination to see how the Polyphonic Motets of
Lassus could contribute to the solution of a crime.

--- he lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic
Motets of Lassus [BRUC].

Chemistry would appear to relate to my career. Indeed, when Watson first met
me, I was excited about the discovery of a chemical which reacted only to
bloodstains. Yet there is no point at which this is used throughout our subsequent
forty years of collaboration.

At a deeper level, however, they are all related. Music (note that I study
polyphonic rather than homophonic forms of vocal compositions) and chemistry deal
with complex structures which provide practice in dealing with complexity.

25
 Chapter Six

Collaboration
I. The capacity to collaborate with colleagues is an important aspect of
detection

My most important collaborator was, of course, Dr. John H. Watson. He was not
an official collaborator but then I was not an official detective. His role was more
important than I first gave him credit. He was indeed a sounding-board, as he
modestly professed:

The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of
habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them --- If I
irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation
served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the
more vividly and swiftly, Such was my humble role in our alliance [CREE].

He is too modest. Not just anyone can be an ideal help-mate. While it is difficult
not to be ironic with such a solid but stolid companion, my compliments are
genuine:

A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always

dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise,
and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate
[BLAN].

And here it is that I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of

wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systemized common sense,
into a prodigy. When I tell my own story I have no such aid [BLAN].

You have a grand gift of silence. --- It makes you quite invaluable as a
companion [TWIS].

26
 Good, Watson. You always keep us flat-footed on the ground. [CREE].

There is a delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to

exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense [HOUN].

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light
[HOUN].

Having written some cases of my own now, I am better able to appreciate the
contribution of the writing of the criminal cases by Watson. The act of writing is not
a mopping-up operation after the case is solved but is an intrinsic part of the solving
of the case. In writing my scientific cases, I realize that I often do not know what I
think till I read what I write. I had indeed appreciated Watson as a sounding-board
in the criminal cases because I did not know what I thought until I read what I said.
However, I had underestimated the role of reading drafts of Watson's cases during
the solving of that case. What I had dismissed as frills gave the cases a dramatic
quality which helped me tell the true story.

You have attempted to tinge it (detection) with romanticism, which produces

much the same effect as if you had worked a love-story or an elopement into the
fifth proposition of Euclid [SIGN].

--- you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your
statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that
severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature
about the thing [COPP].

I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own
accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining
himself rigidly to facts and figures [BLAN]

--- to chronicle and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so
many of my little adventures [REDH].

27
 II. Collaboration is based on the principle of division of labour

Despite the fact that I am a one-person interdisciplinary team, I need the help of
collaborators to solve crimes. Even I can't know (do) it all. It is necessary to divide
the labour of solving crimes among a team of specialists, coordinated, of course, by
myself as a generalist. I had many other collaborators beside my good friend
Watson.

Various inspectors from Scotland Yard also served as somewhat stolid sounding-
boards. Having access to the vast facilities of Scotland Yard, they were able to do
much of the hard slogging work. The information thus acquired they would, from
time to time, pass on to me when they reluctantly sought my help on a case in
which they had plodded down a cul-de-sac and reached a dead-end.

Other collaborators did things for me which I did not have the time or energy to
do myself. The Baker Street Irregulars - a gang of street urchins - could be counted
on to collect information when an official presence would have scared off my quarry
[SIGN]. Merger, my general utility man, could help with leg work and thus save my
energies for larger issues [CREE].

Other collaborators could provide information which I did not want to keep up to
date. Shinwell Johnson had the credentials of being an ex-convict and thus could
provide information about the underworld when I needed it [ILLU]. Langdale Pike,
London's foremost gossip, provided some information which contributed to the
solution of a case [3GAB]. There is little point in cluttering my mind with the
gossip, whether of the social set or of the underworld, which has, by its very nature,
a short shelf life. My mind gravitates to general principles rather than specific facts
which vary from day to day.

III. Collaboration includes collaboration with self and with adversaries

There are also peculiar collaborations with yourself and with your adversaries.
Chapter 4 - Documentation describes how you build up a satellite brain in your

28
documentation, to which you sub-contract out the storage of content so that your
mind is clear of clutter and thus enabled to put this content into context. This
satellite brain is a sort of distillation of your experience as a result of all your past
cases.

You are also in a strange collaborative relationship with your adversaries.

Criminal and criminologist are in a symbiotic relationship. If there is no crime, then
there is no criminology. The good detective has a certain empathy with the criminal.
This enables the detective to enter the mind of the criminal and thus anticipate
what the criminal will do. I once shocked Watson by saying that I would be a good
criminal. Since the criminal is on the edge of society, so the detective must be
eccentric - that is, away from the centre. There is no lack of evidence of my
eccentricities. They are not the result of pose but simply a lack of concern for social
conventions. This empathy with the criminal played a role in a number of cases.

You know my methods in such cases, Watson: I put myself in the man's place,
and having first gauged his intelligence, I try to imagine how I should myself
have proceeded under the same circumstances [MUSG].

You'll get results, Inspector, by always putting yourself in the other fellow's
place, and thinking what you would do yourself [RETI].

I then put myself in the place of Small and looked at it as a man of his capacity
would [SIGN].

I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal
[CHAS].

There is an eternal shuttle between the minds of the criminal and the detective,
as each of them think what the other is thinking that they think. This is one aspect
of the genuine complexity of human communication. In this battle of wits between
me and Moriarty, this was the point at which I outwitted him.

29
 There are limits, you see, to our friend's intelligence. It would have been a coup-
de-maltre had he deduced what I would deduce and acted accordingly [FINA].

I am conscious always of power and design [HOUN].

Let us follow it up in every direction and we can hardly fail to come upon the
motive, which shall in turn lead us to the criminal [LION].

My most profound empathy was with my arch-enemy, Professor Moriarty. I

described him as consultant in crime, which could very well describe myself [VALL].
Watson used the same metaphor of a spider at the centre of its web to describe us
both. This empathy with the enemy was well summarized by one of my criminal
opponents: You ain't the law and I ain't the law either --- [3GAB].

IV. It is important to balance collaboration with solitude

On many occasions, I surprized Watson by demonstrating that I need not even

leave our home to solve a case:10

Thanks to the telephone and the help of the Yard, I can usually get my
essentials without leaving this room [RETI].

But do you mean to say that without leaving your room you can unravel some
knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail
for themselves? [STUD].

He, and others, were often very derisive of my fondness for home.11

10
Holmes was an early electronic cottager. Like the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great
Britain, he worked out of his home. 221B Baker Street was both his home and his office. There was little division
between his private and his professional lives. Being self-motivated, a lover of solitude, and engaged in the
processing of information, he was an ideal candidate for the electronic cottage.

11
One is tempted to make a pun on his name. However, it would be hard to top the groaner of E. W. Hornung, the
brother-in-law of his literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented another detective character Raffles but
assured Doyle that "Though he may be more humble, there's no police like Holmes."

30
 Watson found him, as he expected, lounging about his sitting-room in his
dressing-gown [ENGR].

I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in
my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never
mixed with the men of my year [GLOR].

It is evidently the theory of some armchair lounger who evolves all these neat
little paradoxes in the seclusion of his own study [STUD].

The capacity for solitude is as important as the capacity for collaboration. It

is impossible to be creative if one can not spend time alone. Many people lack
capacity for creativity simply because they can not be alone (they probably bore
other people too). With Watson spending so much time at his club, the best place for
me to be alone is at home. Even more important than saving space in your brain, as
described above, is to save time. Time is the ultimate non-renewable resource.
There is no point in wasting time going to an office, when all the equipment I need -
my mind and my files - is right here at home. It is only when I need specific
information about a particular crime that I need leave home to visit the scene and
use my powers of observation. Deduction can best be done at home.

31
 Chapter Seven

Dedication
I. Dedication to detection, in whatever domain, is essential

My competence is based not so much on intelligence, as conventionally assumed,

but on interest. Consider my brother, Mycroft, of whom I said:

--- he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective
began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the
greatest criminal agent that ever lived, But he has no ambition and no energy.
He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather
be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right [GREE].

I was totally engrossed in my work as an end in itself and not as a means to

some other end. This is stated, throughout the canon, in a number of ways:

The work is its own reward [NOBL].

But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events,
the triumphant vindication of bold theories - are these not the pride and
justification of our life's work? [VALL].

Holmes, however, like all great artists, lived for his art's sake, and, save in
the case of the Duke of Holdemesse, I have seldom known him claim any
large reward for his inestimable services [BLAC].

My disdain for worldly goods is further illustrated by the following

conversation with Watson and by my attitude to a precious stone:

“What have you to gain from it?”

“What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson. I suppose when you doctored
you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?”

32
 “For my education, Holmes.”
“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for
the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither money nor credit in it,
and yet one would wish to tidy it up” [REDC].

There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several

robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised
charcoal [BLUE].

Violet de Merville claimed that I was a paid agent who would have been
equally willing to act for the Baron as well as against him [ILLU]. Watson has
failed to document cases which I had refused because of scruples with respect to the
motives of the client. However, indeed, there is some merit to the accusation, since I
must confess that I found myself focused more on solving the puzzle than on the
moral issues in the case.

II. Dedication requires that you turn yourself into an instrument for
detection

You must not only acquire the skills and tools for detection in your domain but
turn yourself into such a tool.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same
cold and unemotional manner [SIGN].

A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are

antagonistic to clear reasoning [SIGN].

I am not often eloquent. I use my head, not my heart [ILLU].

-- what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the
brain. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore it is
the brain I must consider [MAZA].

33
 The price I paid for this dedication was to be viewed, even by my few intimates,
as heartless. When Stamford introduced me to Watson, he said:

Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes - it approaches to cold-bloodedness

[STUD].

Watson expressed this same sentiment on a number of occasions:

You really are an automaton - a calculating machine. --- there is something

positively inhuman in you at times [SIGN].

Yet, if his emotions were dulled, his intellectual perceptions were exceedingly
active [VALL].

Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses,

would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his
[SILV].

--- his face had resumed that Red Indian composure which had made so many
regard him as a machine rather than as a man [CROO].

I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a

heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was pre-eminent in intelligence
[GREE].

The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself took the faintest
interest, for his mental detachment was absolute [DEVI].

Watson was most alienated from me by my dedication when I refused to

congratulate him on his marriage,12 and argued instead:

12
Holmes himself never married. Indeed, apart from Irene Adler, he showed little emotional interest in women.
The one exception seems to have been based largely on an admiration for her intellect. She was the only person to
outwit him. His life-long bachelorhood has led, in our far-from-Victorian times, to some rude speculation about the
true nature of the relationship between Holmes and Watson. A product of his times, Holmes was invariably
chivalrous to women, and was unconscious of the fact that this could be condescending. I doubt if he would ever
have anticipated female detectives, like Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawsky, Amanda Cross's Kate Fansler, and so on.

34
 But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that
true, cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself,
lest I bias my judgment [SIGN].

Subsequently, I whimsically assigned this domain to him,

Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department [SECO].

III. Dedication requires a lack of concern about what other people think of you

I am ec-centric - that is, away from the centre. Watson mentions my Bohemian
habits [ENGR]. I describe myself as the only unofficial consulting detective [SIGN].
People come to a private detective mainly for privacy [3STU, MISS, SECO]. My
allegiance is not to maintaining the status quo of conventional morality but to the
larger values of truth and justice.13

This places me from time to time outside the official (and often officious) law.
Thus, I was happy to take a confession from an old man with a month to live and
not make it available until he had gone and even then if only absolutely necessary
[BOSC], to justify private revenge in extreme cases [CHAS], to express sympathy
for the lion-hunter who described himself as being so long outside the law that he
had become a law unto himself [DEVI], to require Watson to bring jemmy, dark
lantern, chisel, revolver on one adventure [BRUC] and to pack his revolver on a
number of other occasions (though fortunately he never got around to using it!)

I suppose that I am commiting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a

soul [BLUE].

I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what we have
heard, I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end to it [HOUN].

13
This could be rephrased in terms of the distinction between rules and laws. Holmes was more concerned with
laws (descriptions of nature, including human nature) than rules (prescriptions for conduct). Let us say that you
flaunt the rules of society and ingest a hallucinogenic drug, and then proceed to defy the law of gravity by
attempting to fly off your tenth-storey balcony. The penalty for disobeying the rules is imprisonment and fines; the
penalty for disobeying the laws is injury or death.

35
 A conventional person can not be a good detective, because he/she can not escape
conventional thought. I described Inspectors Lestrade and Gregson of Scotland Yard
as shockingly conventional [STUD]. Conventional people like regular hours but, as I
pointed out in one case, criminals refuse to work from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday
[VALL].

I was not at all upset at the official police getting the credit from the cases which
I had solved. I was at most slightly amused, as I said, when Watson was chagrined
to find them getting credit in the Daily News:

If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions, if he escapes, then it

will be despite their exertions [STUD].

I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work in

itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest
reward [SIGN].

Supposing I unravel the whole matter, you may be sure that Gregson, Lestrade,
and Co. will pocket all the credit. That's what becomes of being an unofficial
personage [STUD].

Watson was more upset than I. Indeed, that is why he began writing up my little
adventures so that I could get the credit which was my due.

Your merits should be publicly recognized. You should publish an account of the
case. If you won't, I will for you [STUD].

Although content to work alongside the official police, I did not cooperate fully
with them.

I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but
not before [FIVE].

As Watson said when he thought that I was dead:

36
 --- the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or more probably
anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the first
criminal agent in Europe [EMPT].

He also pointed out that when Lestrade visited to discuss a case that I

--- was able occasionally, without any active interference, to give some hint or
suggestion drawn from his (my) own vast knowledge and experience [SIXN].

Mr. Holmes is an independent investigator. He is his own master and would

act as his own judgment directed. At the same time, he would naturally feel
loyalty towards the officials who were working on the same case, and he
would not conceal from them anything which would help them in bringing a
criminal to justice [VALL].

Sometimes the police would accuse me of bringing discredit on them:

You are ready enough to use all the information that the police can lay at
your disposal, and then you try to finish the case yourself and bring discredit
upon them [NAVA].

37
 Chapter Eight

Explanation
I. Explanation may perhaps best be considered as telling a story

We tend to assume that the science and art of detection is a matter of thought
and action, with explanation as a subsequent activity after the case is solved. The
corollary to this in scientific research is the naive student completing his/her
research and then writing up the report. It is the writing of the report and the
telling of the story that is the guide in the solution of the problem. Working
hypotheses, during the solving of the case, could be considered as rough drafts of the
final story.

In Chapter 2 - Deduction, I considered the various metaphors used by Watson -

unravelling a ball of twine, forging a chain of links, playing a game of cards - but
concluded that the best metaphor for the process may be that of writing the true
story.14 Most of the little cases, as expounded by Watson, start with the narration of
a client, which states the problem, and ends with a narration by me, which states
the solution. The narration of the client is necessarily incomplete or inaccurate -
otherwise there would be no case. Watson's special genius - and I must acknowledge
his skill - is in interpolating various drafts between that of the client and that of me
to entice the reader to continue reading. What I had dismissed as meretricious was
merely heuristic:

14
Postmodern thinkers have argued that the stories told by scientists have no more "authority" than the stories
told by anyone else. We can not prove the existence of an objective world but merely provide different subjective
maps of it. There are no absolutes, but merely different statements relative to the point of view of the various
observers.

38
 --- these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it
does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which
are never imparted to the reader [CROO].

Alas, that I should have to show my hand so when I tell my own story! It was by
concealing such links in the chain that Watson was enabled to produce his
meretricious finales [BLAN].

His playing with the chronology of events in the story was also part of this
heuristic device. Once again, I was unfairly prescriptive:

I am getting into your involved habit, Watson, of telling a story backward

[THOR].

Just as in thinking, one can employ the technique of arguing backwards from
effects to causes, as I often argued, so in writing one can employ the technique of
telling the story backwards:

--- in the investigations which you have chronicled under the names of 'Study in
Scarlet' and of 'Sign of Four', we have been compelled to reason backwards from
effects to causes [CARD].

--- the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded
in unravelling it [SIGN].

The matter is certainly obscure. If I can't find what they are after, I must
approach the matter from the other end and try to get at the principle [3GAB].

Detection is the reconstruction of a story. I have often been critical of Watson for
reducing what should have been a course on the art of deduction to the telling of
tales. However, on contemplation, I realize that, in a sense, he is right. Deduction is
best considered as the skill in getting the story right. The detective is like a
journalist who digs deeper into his stories. In each case, something happened. There
was a sequence of events. My function was to tell the story.

39
 Telling the story helps in the solution of the crime. As you tell the story , you
clarify the case:

At least I have got a grip of the essential facts of the case. I shall enumerate
them to you, for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person,
and I can hardly expect your cooperation if I do not show you the position from
which we start [SILV].

Understanding is explaining to yourself. It is aided by explaining to others and

eavesdropping on your own explanation. Explanation refers to a product as well as a
process. The product of detection - whose art has been described in those eight
chapters - is an explanation. That is, it is the story of the relevant events of the
case.

II. Explanation may be aided by illustration

Some types of information are easier to understand (that is, to explain to

yourself) using images rather than words. Watson used images throughout the
canon - a scrap of paper found grasped in the hand of a corpse [REIG], messages in
the code of the dancing men [DANC], maps of various scenes of crimes - of the office
of Percy Phelps [NAVA]. of the district around the Priory School [PRIO], and of the
house and garden of Professor Coram [GOLD]. Whereas the illustrations of Sidney
Paget help in the creation of the atmosphere, the images mentioned above serve as
clues.15 The former relate to the meta-story of the relationship between Watson and
I, whereas the latter relate to the story of each case, which I "tell" with the help of
the drafts written by my good friend and colleague, Dr. John B. Watson.

15
In the thousands of detective cases since those of Sherlock Holmes, there has been little use of such images.
However, in scientific cases, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of images (See Edward R Tufte,
Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1990). Holmes, with his interest in the larger
cases, involving the laws of nature, seems to have anticipated this development. Since the time of Holmes, we
have learned that the brain consists of left and right hemispheres, which could be considered as making
conceptual and perceptual maps of the world, and could be identified respectively with print and image media.
Multimedia, which integrates print and image, could be considered as the corpus callosum, the structure joining
the two hemispheres. Holmes would have appreciated the fact that we are learning to use our whole brain.

40
 APPENDIX 1

LIST OF CASES AND CODES

CODE CASE

ABBE ABBEY GRANGE, THE

BERY BERYL CORONET, THE

BLAC BLACK PETER

BLAN BLANCHED SOLDIER, THE

BLUE BLUE CARBUNCLE, THE

BOSC BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY, THE

BRUC BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS, THE

CARD CARDBOARD BOX, THE

CHAS CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON

COPP COPPER BEECHES, THE

CREE CREEPING MAN, THE

CROO CROOKED MAN, THE

DANC DANCING MEN, THE

DEVI DEVIL'S FOOT, THE

DYIN DYING DETECTIVE, THE

EMPT EMPTY HOUSE, THE

ENGR ENGINEER'S THUMB, THE

41
FINA FINAL PROBLEM, THE

FIVE FIVE ORANGE PITS, THE

GLOR GLORIA SCOTT, THE

GOLD GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ, THE

GREE GREEK INTERPRETER,THE

HOUN HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, THE

IDEN CASE OF IDENTITY, A

ILLU ILLUSTRIOUS CLIENT, THE

LADY DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX, THE

LAST HIS LAST BOW

LION LION'S MANE, THE

MAZA MAZARIN STONE, THE

MISS MISSING THREE-QUARTER, THE

MUSG MUSGRAVE RITUAL, THE

NAVA NAVAL TREATY, THE

NOBL NOBLE BACHELOR, THE

NORW NORWOOD BUILDER, THE

PRIO PRIORY SCHOOL, THE

REDC RED CIRCLE, THE

REDH RED-HEADED LEAGUE, THE

REIG REIGATE SQUIRES, THE

RESI RESIDENT PATIENT, THE

42
RETI RETIRED COLOURMAN, THE

SCAN SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA, A

SECO SECOND STAIN, THE

SHOS SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE

SIGN SIGN OF FOUR, THE

SILV SILVER BLAZE

SIXN SIX NAPOLEONS, THE

SOLI SOLITARY CYCLIST, THE

SPEC SPECKLED BAND, THE

STOC STOCKBROKER'S CLERK, THE

STUD STUDY IN SCARLET, A

SUSS SUSSEX VAMPIRE, THE

THOR THOR BRIDGE

3GAB THREE GABLES, THE

3GAR THREE GARRIDEBS, THE

3STU THREE STUDENTS, THE

TWIS MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP, THE

VALL VALLEY OF FEAR, THE

VEIL VEILED LODGER, THE

WIST WISTERIA LODGE

YELL YELLOW FACE, THE

43