![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Holmes on memory...
Jul. 15th, 2011 04:25 pmI enjoyed last year's trio of episodes of Sherlock, a BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson. I liked the "updated" version of the great detective, who uses text messages and the Internet with the kind of alacrity one would expect of the great detective in the 21st century.
For me, among the pleasures of viewing new versions of Holmes are the depictions of certain key scenes, such as the first meeting between Holmes and Watson in the hospital laboratory. Another, which surfaced during the third episode of the BBC series, is an exchange between the two on the subject of memory, in connection with what—in Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, at least—is Holmes' apparent ignorance of the Copernican Theory of the solar system.
In the book, Holmes justifies this lacuna in his knowledge as follows:
As I understand it—and from my own experience—Holmes' stated memory model is incorrect. Human memory is not like a "little empty attic," it is more like a butterfly net whose diameter increases every time a piece of information "flies in" and is caught, thereby making it easier for more information to enter. (This is, perhaps, not the most elegant analogy, but it will have to do for the moment.)
The bottom line? The more you know, the easier it is to learn new things.
Folks who seriously attempt to explain why fictional characters think the way they do have fools for client—or something along those lines—so I'll not attempt to explain this apparent lapse in Holmes' thinking, past a simple rationalization: Obviously, Holmes is so brilliant (and so unique), that he has never had to use a mnemonic to remember anything, the way I've had to.
Cheers...
For me, among the pleasures of viewing new versions of Holmes are the depictions of certain key scenes, such as the first meeting between Holmes and Watson in the hospital laboratory. Another, which surfaced during the third episode of the BBC series, is an exchange between the two on the subject of memory, in connection with what—in Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, at least—is Holmes' apparent ignorance of the Copernican Theory of the solar system.
In the book, Holmes justifies this lacuna in his knowledge as follows:
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."The television script was not as wordy, but communicated essentially the same message. (Curiously enough, Holmes would have reason to eat his words by the end of the episode, but I digress...)
As I understand it—and from my own experience—Holmes' stated memory model is incorrect. Human memory is not like a "little empty attic," it is more like a butterfly net whose diameter increases every time a piece of information "flies in" and is caught, thereby making it easier for more information to enter. (This is, perhaps, not the most elegant analogy, but it will have to do for the moment.)
The bottom line? The more you know, the easier it is to learn new things.
Folks who seriously attempt to explain why fictional characters think the way they do have fools for client—or something along those lines—so I'll not attempt to explain this apparent lapse in Holmes' thinking, past a simple rationalization: Obviously, Holmes is so brilliant (and so unique), that he has never had to use a mnemonic to remember anything, the way I've had to.
Cheers...
