Sherlock Holmes May Not Have Been a Real Crime-Fighter, but His Creator Was

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/sherlock-holmes-may-not-have-been-a-real-crime-fighter-but-his-creator-was/2018/07/09/84146ef4-839b-11e8-9e80-403a221946a7_story.html

by lermontov • 8 years ago

52 18 8 years ago

washingtonpost.com

Jaruzel• 8 years ago

This was explored in a semi-fictional and slightly humourous way in the short-lived period drama 'Houdini & Doyle':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_%26_Doyle

mkay3131• 8 years ago

As well as in the book "Arthur and George" by Julian Barnes. Highly recommended.

newswriter99• 8 years ago

There's a lot about Doyle that was atypical. Brilliant mind. But he believed in some pretty supernatural stuff as well. Faeries and the like.

Imagine what you believe in now that will seem fanciful in a century.

ggg9990• 8 years ago

Is that weird? Tons of brilliant people through history have believed in God, spirits, and other supernatural stuff.

conanbatt• 8 years ago

I think our period will be jokes about diets.

"The second paleo era"

empath75• 8 years ago

It seemed fanciful at the time and he was mocked for it quite a bit.

SaulOfTheJungle• 8 years ago

There is nothing supernatural about faeries.

pacnard• 8 years ago

Cryptozoology? I still think it can fall into the supernatural somewhat?

indigochill• 8 years ago

I'm under the impression that brilliant minds tend to come with eccentricity attached. Part of being brilliant (or at least intelligent) is the awareness that much of what we take as fact isn't. For example, it used to be a "fact" that an imbalance of humors caused all diseases.

The corollary is that when you believe something people think is silly, like that faeries exist, they may be wrong. This is particularly tricky with beliefs like this one which are technically impossible to empirically disprove.

s-shellfish• 8 years ago

It's honestly easier to just create a bucket labeled 'beliefs' and make your own mental model of keeping track of which things are beliefs and which things are actual fact. You can still pull things out of the bucket and put things into it. It's just easier to manage that way, because you might have to deal with some statements that go from being empirically disproven to proven to disproven to proven and so on and so forth for a long time. Just a consequence of too much information and a brain that can't handle all of it independently.

Being able to trust others in their understanding is helpful but it's probably not going to help you sleep at night trying to figure out what you know and what you don't.

GatorD42• 8 years ago

Conan Doyle was fascinating, I highly recommend the biography Teller of Tales, he was prescient about a lot of things (submarine warfare, other military issues during WWI) but also fooled by the rampant fraud in the spiritualist movement, like the Cottingley photographs.

This article makes it seem like he personally investigated the cases, he didn’t. What he did was help publicize them and write long book length summaries of the evidence to convince people. He also published a “pamphlet” on Belgian colonial exploitation of the Congo. He worked directly with the lawyers / investigators to get the facts and used his fame and writing ability to get public attention.

anthonybsd2• 8 years ago

He was also one of the prime suspects behind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man fraud which set back scientific community in general, and anthropology in particular quite a bit.

NeedMoreTea2• 8 years ago

I thought Doyle was fairly quickly ruled out. Charles Dawson seems most likely, has been connected with other frauds and half his collection was fake.

Sherlock Holmes May Not Have Been a Real Crime-Fighter, but His Creator Was

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