thedoc wrote:Blaggard wrote:Incidentally there is no way Sherlock Holmes can do a lot of what he does, for example tell if someone is right or left handed from looking at them, tell if someone is lying from their words and manner, that is an art that is not perfect, some people are every good at reading people though.
Just to say, Sherlock Holmes, believe it or not is a fictional character. That said it wasn't the point but I am bored and thought I'd chime in with something.
I am well aware of that, but did you know that the Holmes character was based on Dr. Joseph Bell, a real person who Conan Doyle had known and worked with. Bell's abilities were similar to Holmes's and he was the pattern for Holmes. This last year I saw a program on PBS about how the Holmes character has influenced modern forensics. Many of the techniques and methods that Doyle wrote about are now in use by the police to investigate crimes. Apparently Bell was very good at doing the things that you say Holmes could not have done.
I did not say they could not be done, it's just Holmes was always right, and a lot of what he did was art more than science. That said when used a methodology that was scientific he was usually right, but that aint that surprising.
A Dr can't magically always cure patients because diagnosis is a an art and the human body is unpredictable. In the same way Holmes could never of always been right about his suppositions because forensics relies on evidence, some that is not apparent at the time, and hence in the same way as medicine it is more of an art than a science. Suffice to say I was merely questioning his impeccable hit rate not that some people can tell if someone is lying or not, there's not a person alive who can read everyone, some people are pathological liars and actually have brought themselves to believe what they say, some people are psychopathic and offer none of the responses that will give a way the usual suspect, and some people are just very clever at hiding their tells. I wonder who Mycroft was based on, since it is often claimed that if his bent was not in the theoretical rather than the practical he would of exceeded Holmes in every way.
We might as well though suppose that the argument about whether Holmes was homosexual as we would this one at the end of the fay he's a fiction, if he took it up the aris, or was likewise based on a real person, we cannot make assumptions based on a fiction born out of an authors mind.
Edit for typo, also some cross posting see the last paragraph.
