Sublime

To Watson, the question at hand begins with the walking stick: “a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a ‘Penang lawyer,’ ” which is “just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.” That first bit is just fine, a description of the stick’s outward qualit

Test your knowledge.

Watson serves as a constant reminder of what errors are possible. As Holmes puts it, “In noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.” And that is no small thing. Even in asking the smallest questions, ones that seem entirely obvious to Holmes, Watson nevertheless forces Holmes to look twice at the very obviousness of the thin

sagacity

Profound Knowledge: a theory of psychology.

wont

Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience

J.A. McCullough

W.J. is but a more extreme example of the exact thing that Watson does with the wineglasses. In both instances there is the spontaneous construction of story, and then a firm belief in its veracity, even when it hinges on nothing more than its seeming cohesiveness. That is deductive problem number one.