Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Trust in The Facts, Not Your Version of Them

By Maria Konnikova | October 4, 2011 |

When we look around us, what is it that we see? Do we see things as they are, or do we at once, without thinking, begin to interpret? Take the simple example of a wine glass. All it is is a transparent object that holds a liquid–which we know by experience should be wine. But if we’re in a store and late for a party? It’s a present, an object of value and beauty for someone else to appreciate. At home and thirsty? It becomes, perhaps, a water glass, if nothing else is available. Bored? A toy to turn around and around, seeing what reflections we can see, how we can distort our own face on the curved surfaces. Solving a murder? Potential evidence of some final, telling pre-death interaction–perhaps the victim took a final sip before he met an untimely end.

Soon, instead of saying there is a wine glass on the table, you say the victim’s glass had been empty at the time of the crime. And you proceed from there. Why was the victim drinking? Why was he interrupted? Why had he placed the glass where it was? And if it doesn’t make sense? Impossible. You’ve started with a fact and worked your way forward. It must fit. The only thing is, you’ve forgotten that it was just a glass to begin with. The victim’s? Maybe not. Placed there by him? Who knows. Empty at the time of the crime? Perhaps, but perhaps not. You’ve imbued an object with a personal take so naturally that you don’t realize you’ve done it. And that’s the crucial–and sometimes fatal–error, of both reasoning and world perception. A pipe is never just a pipe.

Hardly ever, in describing an object, do we see it as just a valueless, objective wine glass. And hardly ever do we think to consider the distinction–for of course, it hardly ever matters. But it’s the rare mind that has trained itself to separate the objective fact from the immediate, subconscious and automatic subjective interpretation that follows.

In “The Adventure of the Priory School,” a valuable young pupil goes missing from boarding school and Sherlock Holmes is called in to help solve the disappearance. In his search for the young man, Holmes comes across the dead body of the German schoolmaster who had vanished on the same night as the boy. Before proceeding further with the inquiry, he stops to enumerate to Watson everything that he has already discovered.

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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard P. Feynman

A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer travel on a train in Scotland. They catch a glimpse a sheep. "Sheep in Scotland are black, it seems," ventures the engineer. "You can be sure only that there is a black sheep in Scotland," answers the physicist. "No, we know only that there is a sheep in Scotland with at least one black side," corrects the mathematician.