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sherlock60It's canon discussion time, everybody! What did you think about the opening of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapters 1-7? As always, I've written up a few of my own random thoughts and questions, which are behind the jump. Add your own in the comments!
We'll watch Granada's adaptation of HOUN next week when we finish the novel.
- Hound of the Baskervilles is one of my favorites. There's so much goodness here, even in just this first half. I'm a sucker for a ♫DUN DUN DUNNNNN♫ big reveal and Mortimer's unveiling the discovery of the footprints doesn't disappoint. The interrogation by Holmes that follows is priceless too. "You saw this?" And we venture into an important mission for Dr. Watson alone, giving us one of the best chances in canon to see Watson as a person, now at work outside Sherlock Holmes' shadow. We get the first taste of that here, and we'll talk about it more next week.
- So in the timeline, we're only four days from the end of The Sign of Four. I guess Watson's prediction of that case being his last with Holmes didn't turn out that way. The doctor gets sent spontaneously by Holmes to bodyguard Sir Henry, and he agrees without a word, not that Holmes gives him a chance to get one in edgewise. Did Watson get a chance to tell Mary he would be away before he went? What do you think she said/thought?
- "If Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one."
But what if he exhausts all other hypotheses? What happens if Sherlock Holmes really found himself dealing with something outside the ordinary laws of nature? I find myself unsure what the answer is. I think my ideal Holmes would be intrigued as a scientist. How can he know the world enough to make deductions of causality and correlation if his understanding of life and is inherently flawed or at best incomplete? But canon Holmes may just as likely see the supernatural as a border he will not cross. The physical plane is his domain and he might simply wash his hands of anything beyond that.
- Holmes gets into another defensive argument with someone about whether he "guesses" or "speculates". The obvious problem is that guess and speculate are synonyms, so the argument is moot on its face. It's easy to see what he's trying to differentiate. He sees guess as what you do when you are just coming up with an answer randomly. Speculate, on the other hand, means to use the powers of deduction to make a thoughtful proposal for the answer. His speculations are never wild guesses, you see; they are only ever educated theories. He may be wrong in his interpretation as he was with Mortimer's cane, but his ideas were always based on real evidence and probabilities.
None of that changes the fact that he does indeed guess. Or speculate, or any other word you care to use. He does not know many of the things he deduces with certainty. The likelihood of him being wrong may be low, but it's not zero either. Methinks the detective doth protest too much. He can lay off being aggrieved by word choice.
We'll watch Granada's adaptation of HOUN next week when we finish the novel.
- Hound of the Baskervilles is one of my favorites. There's so much goodness here, even in just this first half. I'm a sucker for a ♫DUN DUN DUNNNNN♫ big reveal and Mortimer's unveiling the discovery of the footprints doesn't disappoint. The interrogation by Holmes that follows is priceless too. "You saw this?" And we venture into an important mission for Dr. Watson alone, giving us one of the best chances in canon to see Watson as a person, now at work outside Sherlock Holmes' shadow. We get the first taste of that here, and we'll talk about it more next week.
- So in the timeline, we're only four days from the end of The Sign of Four. I guess Watson's prediction of that case being his last with Holmes didn't turn out that way. The doctor gets sent spontaneously by Holmes to bodyguard Sir Henry, and he agrees without a word, not that Holmes gives him a chance to get one in edgewise. Did Watson get a chance to tell Mary he would be away before he went? What do you think she said/thought?
- "If Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one."
But what if he exhausts all other hypotheses? What happens if Sherlock Holmes really found himself dealing with something outside the ordinary laws of nature? I find myself unsure what the answer is. I think my ideal Holmes would be intrigued as a scientist. How can he know the world enough to make deductions of causality and correlation if his understanding of life and is inherently flawed or at best incomplete? But canon Holmes may just as likely see the supernatural as a border he will not cross. The physical plane is his domain and he might simply wash his hands of anything beyond that.
- Holmes gets into another defensive argument with someone about whether he "guesses" or "speculates". The obvious problem is that guess and speculate are synonyms, so the argument is moot on its face. It's easy to see what he's trying to differentiate. He sees guess as what you do when you are just coming up with an answer randomly. Speculate, on the other hand, means to use the powers of deduction to make a thoughtful proposal for the answer. His speculations are never wild guesses, you see; they are only ever educated theories. He may be wrong in his interpretation as he was with Mortimer's cane, but his ideas were always based on real evidence and probabilities.
None of that changes the fact that he does indeed guess. Or speculate, or any other word you care to use. He does not know many of the things he deduces with certainty. The likelihood of him being wrong may be low, but it's not zero either. Methinks the detective doth protest too much. He can lay off being aggrieved by word choice.
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Date: 2013-01-13 10:10 am (UTC)I think Holmes would keep researching the presumable supernatural until the end of his life, and if he couldn't find out enough about it, assume he simply lacked skill, knowledge and technology. He lived in the age of scientist trying to weigh souls, after all. It was just the time to dissect the banshee.
Sunday, 13 January 2013
Date: 2013-01-14 03:46 am (UTC)