Topics Related To Deduction

Credit to DeductionJournal

So according to Dr Maria Konnikova in her “Lessons from Sherlock Holmes” blog post series and her book “Mastermind How to think like Sherlock Holmes,” there are three things that are needed to be a good detective in Holmes’ eyes; Good reasoning skills (often umbrella termed as deduction), a good knowledge base on what to found these reasonings on, and imagination to solve the more complex problems.

Your knowledge base should be tailored to what suits your life best, but if your keen to follow in Holmes’ footsteps then it would probably start with some level of forensic sciences – it’s common for Holmes to discuss different soils and their properties and how they relate to different industries or locations. This sort of information has been characterized by geo-scientists for years, and have been put into a database for police usage by Professor Lorna Dawson at the James Hutton institute.

If we take notes from Holmes’ inspiration, Dr. Joseph Bell, then an understanding of maladies and symptoms may be handy when working in the medical profession. Resources on finger nails alone can reveal information on someone’s recent nutrition history, smoking habits, and blood flow.

Becoming aware of the modern advances in your fields also allows you to stay ahead of the game. Holmes was fully aware that keeping knowledge accessible was far more important and realistic than storing it all, even with the method of loci. The important thing is knowing what questions you need to ask.

A nice discussion on historical cases and scientific developments surround Holmes is the book “The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective’s Greatest Cases” by E.J. Wagner: I read it a few years ago and found it very entertaining.

The knowledge of Holmes was adaptable by Conan-Doyle based on whatever case the sleuth found himself on so its purely a limit of your imagination as to what things you could research, but often times mud tracks of shoes, animals, or carriages would feature in his stories, so its a decent place to start – types of shoes, types of tyres, depths of tracks and depths of imprints – does it change with soil type? Keep asking questions and keep seeking answers!