"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"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."
"I never guess. It is a shocking habit -- destructive to the logical faculty."
.......These are some
gems uttered by one of my favourite characters,
Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes would see a walking stick and derive the background of its owner. I wouldn't have been more awestruck if he had performed a magical trick. Then he would take us through his deductive and analytical thinking process, step by step, and the wonder would evaporate. From a magician he would become an ordinary (though intelligent) person.
I don't know if my love of reasoning and deducing things has anything to do with my love of Sherlock Holmes or it could equally be vice versa...one thing I realised was that the human mind has capacities far greater than what we usually attribute to it and what seems mysterious or strange on first appearance may have a simple explanation to it.
I can't help mentioning one of his philosophical statements here, not because it's one of his philosophical best, but it's one of the things I have been thinking about lately.....
"What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 12:18 pm
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