Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong by Pierre Bayard Read Free Book Online

subtly maintained confusion between scientific law and statistical generality.
    Holmes usually bases his deductions on statistical recurrences, but he omits the fact that these recurrences have no constraining
     power over reality. Rather, they only sketch the shape of probabilities and therefore leave open the possibility for exceptions
     in every case.
    Thus it is altogether excessive for Holmes to speak of “deduction” (“as Dr. Mortimer . . . deduced from the cigar ash”) 29 when he refers to the doctor’s hypothesis relating the size of the heap of ashes in front of the wicket-gate to the length
     of time that Sir Charles Baskerville lingered there.
    What slips between scientific law and statistical generality is in fact the individual suspect. As an object of investigation,
     the suspect does indeed come under the jurisdiction of statistics—which can include him within a range of probable perpetrators—but
     he is not under the rule of scientific law; in every circumstance, the suspect retains a share of free choice that allows
     him to avoid complete predictability.
    A suspect cannot exonerate himself by saying he fled the scene of the crime by flying away; no one can free himself from the
     law of gravity. But the deduction that Mortimer and Holmes make is not ironclad. It is true that in many cases a large pile
     of ash signifies a smoker standing still, but it can just as well signify that he waited for a long time before he tapped
     his cigar. It is true, too, that prolonged standing in the cold could be motivated by a meeting, but it could also be explained
     if Sir Charles had been lost in thought, or if he had observed something that interested him.
    It is the human subject in general, and the element of the unconscious in particular, that slips into this gap between scientific
     law and statistical regularity. In so doing, it escapes the Holmes method, which functions perfectly and with great elegance
     on abstractions but is not necessarily adapted to resolving the complex individual problems with which the police are confronted.

    The third flaw in the Holmes method is the lack of understanding about the place of the subject in the overall interpretation
     of the case. The pseudoscientific Holmes method eliminates the factor of individual psychology among the actors in the mysteries
     it is trying to solve. But it also eliminates this factor in the investigator himself, even though it is a key determinant.
    This psychological factor plays a prominent role in the overall construction that allows the investigator not just to interpret
     clues, but even to decide what is a clue and what is not. Holmes’s construction of the events, which tallies with Dr. Mortimer’s,
     has obviously been created by the detective, at least partially, before the investigation has even properly begun.
    The detective’s hypothesis rests on a figure and a motive. The figure is that of the murderer with the dog, a criminal who
     makes use of both legend and a beast to commit his murders. Note that this construction eliminates other hypotheses, for instance
     that of accident—defended by the police—or that of a murder committed in some different way. Like a magnetic pole, it quickly
     attracts a whole series of “clues,” such as animal footprints, which would not necessarily be examined at all in the framework
     of other constructions.
    It is clear, too, that from the very beginning Holmes places a higher value on one motive in his selection and interpretation
     of clues—namely, on financial interest. This is obviously not to be ignored when the victim possesses a large fortune. But
     it is not the only reason for which human beings commit murders, and it has the drawback of leaving other possible explanations
     for the tragedy of Baskerville Hall unexplored.
    This construction is trapped in an imagined universe, a universe that truly belongs to Holmes, even though it finds sustenance
     in the imaginations of those