Sherlock Holmes and Psychohistory

[Brontodon]

Is anybody here a fan of, or at least familiar with, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series?

[Caya]

Familiar with, yes. Fan, admittedly not really. I do recognize the importance of its influence on Sci-Fi, though. Anyway, handing this over to @Carol the Dabbler who is the woman to ask about Sci-Fi classics.

[Carol the Dabbler]

3 hours ago, Brontodon said:

Is anybody here a fan of, or at least familiar with, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series?

I've heard of it, but am definitely not familiar with it, so Caya has me beat.  I think I started to read it years ago (though I may be thinking of War and Peace), but gave up when the characters that I'd gotten to know in Chapter 1 were all dead and gone by Chapter 2.  Apparently there needs to be at least one continuing character that I care about before a story really appeals to me.  (I've read many of Asimov's robot stories -- I'm fond of Daneel Olivaw -- and Nightfall is quite memorable.  But it's been years since I read anything of his.)

Now I'm curious as to how your thread title connects to this.

 

[Brontodon]

Okay, here's the connection.  If you're familiar with Foundation you know about psychohistory -- the fictional science in the series that allows psychohistorians to predict the future via an intimate understanding and scientific analysis of human behavior.  In Foundation, Asimov calls it "a profound statistical science."  Predictions of the behaviors of any given individual are not reliable, but become more accurate when applied to larger and larger populations.  In the Foundation stories, the population to which psychohistorical analysis is applied are the quadrillions of human beings who inhabit the galaxy as part of the galactic empire.  With such a large population, psychohistorical predictions can be quite accurate.

In The Sign of the Four, Doyle writes:

“Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,” said Holmes. “He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician."

When I first read this, it struck me as a very accurate summation of psychohistory!  I then wondered whether Doyle had invented psychohistory, or if (probably more likely) Asimov had been influenced by this passage.  Then I realized that the idea was not original with Doyle -- he was talking about Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man.  I have not read that book, but I've always been fascinated by the similarity of the idea to that of Asimov's psychohistory.

[Carol the Dabbler]

2 hours ago, Brontodon said:

I ... wondered whether Doyle had invented psychohistory, or if (probably more likely) Asimov had been influenced by this passage.  Then I realized that the idea was not original with Doyle -- he was talking about Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man.

As you say, Doyle (speaking as Holmes) states that he borrowed the idea from Reade.  Beyond that, the idea may have been passed from one person to another, as you suggest, or alternatively it may have arisen more or less independently in various minds over the centuries (or it may have been some of each).  I believe there's a similar theory regarding the movement of particles, which may have inspired the human-behavior concept in some cases.

Holmes may be correct that human behavior "in the aggregate ... becomes a mathematical certainty" but that concept may not be particularly useful in practice.  Even Holmes occasionally let his deductions be led astray by his preconceived notions, and most people are far more likely to do so.  Even (or especially?) people considered experts in their field often have their observations clouded by assumptions.  Even if a new Holmes should somehow arise among us, I suspect he would be attacked from all sides.

 

[Brontodon]

The nearest I've been able to come to Holmes's "mathematical certainty" in The Martyrdom of Man is the following:

"As a single atom, man is an enigma: as a whole, he is a mathematical problem. As an individual, he is a free agent: as a species, the offspring of necessity."

I think Holmes expresses it in clearer language.

>> Even Holmes occasionally let his deductions be led astray by his preconceived notions <<

That may be so, although he assiduously tried to avoid such preconceptions.  From A Scandal in Bohemia:

“I have no data yet. 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."

[Carol the Dabbler]

46 minutes ago, Brontodon said:

The nearest I've been able to come to Holmes's "mathematical certainty" in The Martyrdom of Man is the following:

"As a single atom, man is an enigma: as a whole, he is a mathematical problem. As an individual, he is a free agent: as a species, the offspring of necessity."

I think Holmes expresses it in clearer language.

Yes, Holmes was definitely more specific!  But what he said could almost be derived from that quote -- a mathematical problem generally has a specific solution.

As for the occasional Holmes slip-up, I wish I could think of an example!  All I have is an impression that he said, at least once, something along the lines of "I should have realized it sooner, but I was assuming . . . . " -- at which point, of course, he proceeds to come up with what proves to be the correct deduction.

I may possibly thinking of Nero Wolfe, though, who every now and then says something like "I've been a witling -- I was overlooking the possibility that . . . ."

 

[Brontodon]

The way I read it, an "enigma" is an insoluble problem, incapable of being analyzed accurately, but a "mathematical problem" can be addressed using mathematical techniques and an answer found.

 I haven't found the one you have in mind, but there are a number of instances in which Holmes casigates himself for making an error.  Here's an example from The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist:

“Too late, Watson; too late!” cried Holmes, as I ran panting to his side. “Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train! It’s abduction, Watson—abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That’s right. Now, jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder.”

[Carol the Dabbler]

9 hours ago, Brontodon said:

The way I read it, an "enigma" is an insoluble problem, incapable of being analyzed accurately, but a "mathematical problem" can be addressed using mathematical techniques and an answer found.

Agreed.  There have been a few mathematical problems (or what could perhaps better be termed "mathematical questions") that have taken centuries to solve (e.g., proving Fermat's Last Theorum), but I doubt that was quite the sort of thing Reade was talking about.

9 hours ago, Brontodon said:

“Too late, Watson; too late!” cried Holmes, as I ran panting to his side. “Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train!"

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing that I half-remembered reading somewhere in the Holmes canon.  Thank you!

I suppose even the best fictional detectives need to do a second deduction now and then -- otherwise some stories would be too short.