Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (32 page)

“There’s blackmail in it, or I am much mistaken.”
from
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
, “The Yellow Face,” p. 30.

“Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness . . .”
from
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, chapter 12: Death on the Moor, p. 121.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Dynamic Attic: Putting It All Together

I
n the opening pages of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, Watson enters the sitting room of 221B Baker Street to find a walking stick that has been left behind by a certain James Mortimer. When he takes the opportunity to try to put Holmes’s methods into practice, seeing what he can deduce about the doctor from the appearance of the stick, he finds his thoughts interrupted by his friend.

“Well, Watson, what do you make of it?” Holmes asks.

Watson is shocked. Holmes had been sitting at the breakfast table, with his back turned. How could he have known what the doctor was doing or thinking? Surely, he must have eyes in the back of his head.

Not quite, says Holmes. “I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me. But tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor’s stick?” he presses. “Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.”

Watson gamely takes up the challenge, trying his best to mirror his companion’s usual approach. “I think that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed, since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation,” he begins. “I also think that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot.”

The first part initially sounds reasonable enough. But why does Watson deduce the second? “Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one, has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it,” he says.

Holmes is pleased. “Perfectly sound!” he exclaims. And what else?

“And then again, there is the ‘friends of the C.C.H.,’” Watson notes the inscription on the stick. “I should guess that to be the Something
Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance,” he continues, “and which has made him a small presentation in return.”

“Really, Watson, you excel yourself,” Holmes responds. He then goes on to praise Watson as a “conductor of light” and a stimulator of genius, ending his paean with the words, “I must confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.”

Has Watson finally learned the trick? Has he mastered Holmes’s reasoning process? Well, for at least a moment he basks in the compliment. Until, that is, Holmes picks up the stick himself and comments that there are indeed “one or two indications” that can furnish the basis for deduction.

“Has anything escaped me?” Watson asks with admitted self-importance. “I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?”

Not exactly. “I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous,” Holmes says. “When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal.”

Watson takes that to mean that he had, in point of fact, been right. Well, only insofar as he got those details accurately. But is he still right if he fails to see the bigger picture?

Not according to Holmes. He suggests, for instance, that C.C.H. is much more likely to refer to Charing Cross Hospital than to any local hunt, and that from there stem multiple inferences. What may those be, wonders Watson?

“Do none suggest themselves?” Holmes asks. “You know my methods. Apply them!”

And with that famed interjection, that challenge, if you will, Holmes embarks on his own logical tour de force, which ends with the arrival of Dr. Mortimer himself, followed closely by the curly-haired spaniel whose existence the detective has just deduced.

This little repartee brings together all of the elements of the scientific approach to thought that we’ve spent this book exploring and serves as a near-ideal jumping-off point for discussing how to bring the thought process together as a whole—and how that coming together may fall short. That walking stick illustrates both how to think properly and how one can fail to do so. It presents that crucial line between theory and practice, between the knowledge of how we’re to think and the practice of actually doing so.

Watson has observed Holmes at work many a time, and yet when it comes to applying the process himself, he remains unsuccessful. Why? And how can we do him one better?

1. Know Yourself—And Your Environment

We begin, as always, with the basics. What are we ourselves bringing to a situation? How do we assess the scene even before we begin the observational process?

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 qualities. But take a close look at the second part. Is that true observation, or is it more like inference?

Hardly has Watson started to describe the stick and already his personal biases are flooding his perception, his own experience and history and views framing his thoughts without his realizing it. The stick is no longer just a stick. It is the stick of the old-fashioned family practitioner, with all the characteristics that follow from that connection. The instantaneously conjured image of the family doctor will color every judgment that Watson makes from this point forward—and he will have no idea that it is doing so. In fact, he will even fail to consider that C.C.H. might stand for a prominent hospital, something that he as a doctor himself
should be well aware of, if only he’d not gone off on the country doctor tangent and failed to consider it entirely.

This is the frame, or the subconscious prime, in all its glory. And who knows what other biases, stereotypes, and the like will be rustled up out of the corners of Watson’s brain attic along with it? Certainly not he. But we can know one thing. Any heuristics—or rules of thumb, as you’ll recall—that will affect his eventual judgment will likely have their root in this initial, thoughtless assessment.

Holmes, on the other hand, realizes that there is always a step that comes
before
you begin to work your mind to its full potential. Unlike Watson, he doesn’t begin to observe without quite being aware of it, but rather takes hold of the process from the very beginning—and starting well before the stick itself. He takes in the whole situation, doctor and stick and all, long before he starts to make detailed observations about the object of interest itself. And to do it, he does something far more prosaic than Watson could ever suppose: he looks in a polished silver coffeepot. He doesn’t need to use his deductional powers where he has use of a reflective surface; why waste them needlessly?

So, too, must we always look around us to see if there’s a ready-and-waiting mirror, before plunging in without a second thought—and then use it to take stock of the entire situation instead of letting the mind thoughtlessly get ahead of itself and begin grabbing who knows what out of our attic without our full knowledge and control.

Evaluating our environment means different things, depending on the choices we are making. For Holmes, it was observing the room, Watson’s actions, and the easily available coffeepot. Whatever it is, we can rest assured that it will require a pause before the dive. We can’t forget to look at our surroundings before launching into action—or even into the Holmesian thought process. For, after all, pausing and reflecting is the first step to that process. It’s point zero of observation. Before we begin to gather detail, we need to know what detail, if any, we’ll be gathering.

Remember: specific, mindful motivation matters. It matters a great deal. We have to frame our goals ahead of time. Let them inform how we proceed. Let them inform how we allocate our precious cognitive resources. We have to think them through, write them down, to make sure
they are as clear-cut as they can possibly be. Holmes doesn’t need to take notes, to be sure, but most of us certainly do, at least for the truly important choices. It will help clarify the important points before we embark on our journey of thought:
What do I want to accomplish? And what does that mean for my future thought process?
Not looking necessarily means not finding. And to find, we first need to know where to look.

2. Observe
—
Carefully and Thoughtfully

When Watson looks at the stick, he notes its size and heft. He also remarks the beat-up bottom—a sign of frequent walking in terrain that is less than hospitable. Finally, he looks to the inscription,
C.C.H.,
and with that concludes his observations, confident as ever that nothing has escaped his notice.

Holmes, on the other hand, is not so sure. First off, he does not limit his observation to the stick as physical object; after all, the original goal, the frame set in the first step of the process, was to learn about the man who owned it. “It is only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room,” he tells Watson. But of course: the stick was left behind. Watson knows that, naturally—and yet he fails to
know
it.

What’s more, the stick creates its own context, its own version of the owner’s history, if you will, by virtue of the inscription. While Watson reads the
C.C.H.
only in light of his unconscious preconceptions of the country practitioner, Holmes realizes that it must be observed on its own terms, without any prior assumptions, and that in that light, it tells its own story. Why would a doctor receive a stick as a gift? Or, as Holmes puts it, “On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will?” That is the point of departure suggested by a true observation of the inscription, not a biased one, and that point suggests a background story that can be reached through careful deduction. The context is an integral part of the situation, not a take-it-or-leave-it accessory.

As for the stick itself, here, too, the good doctor has not been as
careful in his observations as he should have been. First off, he merely glances at it, whereas Holmes “examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and, carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.” Closer scrutiny, from multiple angles and multiple approaches. Not as fast as the Watson method, to be sure, but much more thorough. And while it may well be true that such care will not be rewarded with any new details, you can never know in advance, so if you are to truly observe, you can never afford to forego it. (Though, of course, our own window and convex lens may be metaphorical, they nevertheless imply a degree of closer scrutiny, of scrupulousness and sheer time spent in contemplation of the problem.)

Watson notes the stick’s size and the worn-down bottom, true. But he fails to see that there are teeth marks plainly visible on its middle. Teeth marks on a stick? It’s hardly a leap of faith to take that observation as implying the existence of a dog who has carried the stick, and carried it often, behind his master (as Holmes, in fact, does). That, too, is part of the observation, part of the full story of Dr. Mortimer. What’s more, as Holmes points out to his friend, the size of the dog’s jaw is evident from the space between the marks, making it possible to envision just what type of dog it might have been. That, of course, would be jumping ahead to deduction—but it wouldn’t be possible at all without recognizing the necessary details and mentally noting their potential significance for your overall goal.

3. Imagine—Remembering to Claim the Space You May Not Think You Need

After observation comes that creative space, that time to reflect and explore the ins and outs of your attic called imagination. It’s that break of the mind, that three-pipe problem, that violin interlude or opera or concerto or trip to the art museum, that walk, that shower, that who knows what that forces you to take a step back from the immediacy of the situation before you once more move forward.

We need to give Watson some credit here. He doesn’t exactly have
time to take a break, as Holmes puts him on the spot, challenging him to apply the detective’s methods to inferring what he can about the implications of C.C.H. standing for Charing Cross Hospital instead of for Something Hunt. Watson can hardly be expected to break out the cigarettes or brandy.

And yet Watson could do something a little less extreme but far more appropriate to a problem of far lesser magnitude than solving a full crime. After all, not everything is a three-pipe problem. It may be enough to take a more metaphorical step back. To distance yourself mentally, to pause and reflect and reconfigure and reintegrate in a much shorter time frame.