February 1, 2012
Would Sherlock Holmes Use Google?
Alexandra Radbill
Director of Development, Your Resource
Would Sherlock Holmes Use Google?
Alexandra Radbill
Director of Development, Your Resource
Minutes of the 18th Meeting of the 70th Year
The 18th meetinbg of the 70th year of the Old Guard of Princeton was held February 1. 2012. President Bob Varrin presided. Don Edwards led the invocation, and the minutes of the meeting of January 25, 2012 were read by Richard Armstrong. Three guests were presented: Bill Strong, introduced by Charlie Ufford; Anne Seltzer, introduced by Alison Lahnston; and Don Healy, introduced by Bob Craig. Attendance was 97.
The speaker for the 18th meeting of the 70th year of the Old Guard was Dr.Alexandra Radbill, whose talk was entitled: "Would Sherlock Holmes Use Google."
Dr. Radbill came to an appreciation of detective fiction through her interest in using literature as a cultural barometer. She came late to this appreciation, overcoming the natural snobbishness of a student and teacher of English literature to the very popular genre of "detective stories."
Asking for a show of hands for how many in the audience had read at least one Sherlock Holmes story, she received close to unanimous positive response--very popular, indeed.
She pointed out that the genre has reinvented itself multiple times, so that no matter your interest, profession, or travel plans, you can find a mystery or detective to match. And, you will come away from the experience with a fairly accurate view of an historical event, a political system, a locale, or a country's values.
She also noted that detective fiction appears only in those countries where the form of government allows discussion, criticism, and analysis. In Spain, for example, detective fiction appears only after the end of the Franco regime in the 1970s. It was change of this sort--the rise of a more egalitarian world--that paved the way for the emergence of Sherlock Holmes.
To explore whether Holmes would use modern technologies she looked at both how he came to be and which 19th century technologies he employed, andnbwhy.
For the former, Dr. Radbill gave us a brief overview of a few key historical events and movements that would pave the way for the eventual emergence of Holmes. She started with "The Great Chain of Being," which was the prevalent pre-Renaissance world-view that assigned a place and value to everything, and stretched unbroken from God through the angels and thence to all forms of life, ending up with minerals. It provided structure and a guide to all of life, preventedvchaos, and could not be questioned--whatever is, is right.
With the growth of Humanism in the Renaissance and the questioning of absolute hierarchy in the Reformation, the links in the Great Chain began to weaken and break as time passed.
Copernicus replaced the earth with the sun as the center of the universe, Bacon established systematic experimentation as a basis for research, and in the 18th century, the Enlightenment championed humankind and believed science and reason could bring happiness and progress. Revolutions--Industrial, American and French--changed whole populations, as well as governments, politics, art, science, medicine, and technology.
Dr. Radbill selected 1859 as her pivotal--if arbitrary--date for the culmination of these changes. Arthur Conan Doyle was born; "On the Origin of Species" was published. Origin allowed a new way of experiencing and looking at the world, and it provided a language and method for understanding that world. Conventional wisdom was to be challenged, theories proposed, and all observations taken into account.
In Scotland, Dr. Joseph Bell was Doyle's Professor of Medicine. Influenced by Darwin's methodology and ideas, Bell taught his students to: "Observe carefully, deduce shrewdly, and confirm with evidence. Don't make the facts fit your theory--get the facts first, observe and deduce until you are driven irresistibly to your conclusion." Sound familiar?
A brief summary of forensic science was full of wonderful information: fingerprints were used for identification by the Chinese in 770 BC, and a Greek physician created a lie detector in 250 BC when he noted that his patients' pulse rates increased when they lied. By the mid 19th century (Holmes first appeared in 1887) Scotland Yard was conducting bullet comparisons, developing tissue tests for arsenic poisoning, using body temperature to determine time of death, and systematically using finger prints for identification.
A perfect environment for producing a new profession--the consulting detective--and a new character type, and Conan Doyle, whose training and career (medicine and writing) were products of this environment, created Holmes and Watson.
Throughout her talk Dr. Radbill used "A Study in Scarlet," the first of the 60 or so Holmes' stories, to describe Holmes methods of observation and analytic reasoning. Analytic is to reason backwards from the data; synthetic (which the police and everyone used) is to reason forward--to theorize before you have all the facts.The majority of the steps in Holmes' method come down to seeing and thinking, data and theory--it is Holmes' brain that is the central element.
If we transport Holmes to the 21st century and ask how he would operate today, we must take into account one very important difference in the view of crime. After World War II, the why of crime (psychological) replaces the who/where of crime which are the basis of the Holmes stories. He doesn't analyze or profile criminals the way modern detectives do. This change is the product of another cultural revolution--Freud's description and analysis of the unconscious.
Based on the type of facts and information Holmes collects in the stories, a sampling of the modern techniques he would have used most likely would.
include the mobile phone, digital camera. DNA analysis, GPS tracking and phone records.
In detective stories on TV the characters are glued to computer screens and constantly checking mobile devices for information. The information helps the detective work backward to solve the crime. The forensic pathologist has become Holmes' eyes. Dr. Radbill encouraged us to watch the current PBS series in which Holmes and Watson are thoroughly modern--they live in, work in, and solve 21st century crimes. Holmes retains the all-knowing persona; technology is simply a means to collect even more and better data, or to test a hypothesis, but it cannot provide a solution. If technology could simply identify the killer, such a case would not interest--nor, for that matter, require--Holmes.
The modern cases he would accept would be like the ones he accepted 125 years ago -- baffling ones where evidence goes in many directions, lacks coherence, or is simply absent. The new adventures would require a data base (probably no longer entirely in Holmes' head) which can be searched for guidance. As he said in A Study in Scarlet, "If you have all the details of a thousand crimes at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the thousand first."
Dr. Radbill's answer to the question she posed in her title is that Holmes today, like Poirot, would be the detective of the "little gray cells," not the Google
search engine.
Respectfully submitted,
Nancy Beck
The speaker for the 18th meeting of the 70th year of the Old Guard was Dr.Alexandra Radbill, whose talk was entitled: "Would Sherlock Holmes Use Google."
Dr. Radbill came to an appreciation of detective fiction through her interest in using literature as a cultural barometer. She came late to this appreciation, overcoming the natural snobbishness of a student and teacher of English literature to the very popular genre of "detective stories."
Asking for a show of hands for how many in the audience had read at least one Sherlock Holmes story, she received close to unanimous positive response--very popular, indeed.
She pointed out that the genre has reinvented itself multiple times, so that no matter your interest, profession, or travel plans, you can find a mystery or detective to match. And, you will come away from the experience with a fairly accurate view of an historical event, a political system, a locale, or a country's values.
She also noted that detective fiction appears only in those countries where the form of government allows discussion, criticism, and analysis. In Spain, for example, detective fiction appears only after the end of the Franco regime in the 1970s. It was change of this sort--the rise of a more egalitarian world--that paved the way for the emergence of Sherlock Holmes.
To explore whether Holmes would use modern technologies she looked at both how he came to be and which 19th century technologies he employed, andnbwhy.
For the former, Dr. Radbill gave us a brief overview of a few key historical events and movements that would pave the way for the eventual emergence of Holmes. She started with "The Great Chain of Being," which was the prevalent pre-Renaissance world-view that assigned a place and value to everything, and stretched unbroken from God through the angels and thence to all forms of life, ending up with minerals. It provided structure and a guide to all of life, preventedvchaos, and could not be questioned--whatever is, is right.
With the growth of Humanism in the Renaissance and the questioning of absolute hierarchy in the Reformation, the links in the Great Chain began to weaken and break as time passed.
Copernicus replaced the earth with the sun as the center of the universe, Bacon established systematic experimentation as a basis for research, and in the 18th century, the Enlightenment championed humankind and believed science and reason could bring happiness and progress. Revolutions--Industrial, American and French--changed whole populations, as well as governments, politics, art, science, medicine, and technology.
Dr. Radbill selected 1859 as her pivotal--if arbitrary--date for the culmination of these changes. Arthur Conan Doyle was born; "On the Origin of Species" was published. Origin allowed a new way of experiencing and looking at the world, and it provided a language and method for understanding that world. Conventional wisdom was to be challenged, theories proposed, and all observations taken into account.
In Scotland, Dr. Joseph Bell was Doyle's Professor of Medicine. Influenced by Darwin's methodology and ideas, Bell taught his students to: "Observe carefully, deduce shrewdly, and confirm with evidence. Don't make the facts fit your theory--get the facts first, observe and deduce until you are driven irresistibly to your conclusion." Sound familiar?
A brief summary of forensic science was full of wonderful information: fingerprints were used for identification by the Chinese in 770 BC, and a Greek physician created a lie detector in 250 BC when he noted that his patients' pulse rates increased when they lied. By the mid 19th century (Holmes first appeared in 1887) Scotland Yard was conducting bullet comparisons, developing tissue tests for arsenic poisoning, using body temperature to determine time of death, and systematically using finger prints for identification.
A perfect environment for producing a new profession--the consulting detective--and a new character type, and Conan Doyle, whose training and career (medicine and writing) were products of this environment, created Holmes and Watson.
Throughout her talk Dr. Radbill used "A Study in Scarlet," the first of the 60 or so Holmes' stories, to describe Holmes methods of observation and analytic reasoning. Analytic is to reason backwards from the data; synthetic (which the police and everyone used) is to reason forward--to theorize before you have all the facts.The majority of the steps in Holmes' method come down to seeing and thinking, data and theory--it is Holmes' brain that is the central element.
If we transport Holmes to the 21st century and ask how he would operate today, we must take into account one very important difference in the view of crime. After World War II, the why of crime (psychological) replaces the who/where of crime which are the basis of the Holmes stories. He doesn't analyze or profile criminals the way modern detectives do. This change is the product of another cultural revolution--Freud's description and analysis of the unconscious.
Based on the type of facts and information Holmes collects in the stories, a sampling of the modern techniques he would have used most likely would.
include the mobile phone, digital camera. DNA analysis, GPS tracking and phone records.
In detective stories on TV the characters are glued to computer screens and constantly checking mobile devices for information. The information helps the detective work backward to solve the crime. The forensic pathologist has become Holmes' eyes. Dr. Radbill encouraged us to watch the current PBS series in which Holmes and Watson are thoroughly modern--they live in, work in, and solve 21st century crimes. Holmes retains the all-knowing persona; technology is simply a means to collect even more and better data, or to test a hypothesis, but it cannot provide a solution. If technology could simply identify the killer, such a case would not interest--nor, for that matter, require--Holmes.
The modern cases he would accept would be like the ones he accepted 125 years ago -- baffling ones where evidence goes in many directions, lacks coherence, or is simply absent. The new adventures would require a data base (probably no longer entirely in Holmes' head) which can be searched for guidance. As he said in A Study in Scarlet, "If you have all the details of a thousand crimes at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the thousand first."
Dr. Radbill's answer to the question she posed in her title is that Holmes today, like Poirot, would be the detective of the "little gray cells," not the Google
search engine.
Respectfully submitted,
Nancy Beck