by neufer » Tue Dec 01, 2015 1:31 pm
RedFishBlueFish wrote:
Today's APOD is opportune for, on this date in 1887, Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" was published, introducing Sherlock Holmes to the world.
Design, or serendipity?
A Study in Scarlet
by Arthur Conan Doyle
CHAPTER II. THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION
I found incidentally that [Holmes] was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
"To forget it!"
"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."
"But the Solar System!" I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle#Spiritualism.2C_Freemasonry wrote:
<<Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects. In 1887 he joined the Society for Psychical Research and was also initiated as a Freemason (26 January 1887) at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. He was a member of the renowned supernatural organisation The Ghost Club. In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his own flat in Bloomsbury; Doyle declared the clairvoyance manifestations to be genuine. In 1920, Doyle debated the claims of Spiritualism with the notable sceptic Joseph McCabe at Queen's Hall in London.
Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a novella on the subject, The Land of Mist, featuring the character
Professor Challenger. The Coming of the Fairies (1922) appears to show that Conan Doyle was convinced of the veracity of the five Cottingley Fairies photographs (which decades later were exposed as a hoax). He reproduced them in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits.
In 1922, the psychical researcher Harry Price accused the spirit photographer William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope, but further evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers. Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and claimed if he persisted to write "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Harry Houdini. Price wrote "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope." Because of the exposure of Hope and other fraudulent spiritualists, Doyle led a mass resignation of eighty-four members of the Society for Psychical Research, as they believed the Society was opposed to spiritualism.
Doyle and spiritualist William Thomas Stead were duped into believing Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers, both claiming that the Zancigs used telepathy. In 1924 Julius and Agnes Zancig confessed that that their mind reading act was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick method they had used, under the title Our Secrets!! in a London newspaper.
Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Doyle had a motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and that
The Lost World contains several encrypted clues regarding his involvement in the hoax.>>
[quote="RedFishBlueFish"]
Today's APOD is opportune for, on this date in 1887, Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" was published, introducing Sherlock Holmes to the world.
Design, or serendipity?[/quote][quote][c][b][size=150][color=#FF2400]A Study in Scarlet[/color][/size]
by Arthur Conan Doyle
CHAPTER II. THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION[/b][/c]
I found incidentally that [Holmes] was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
"To forget it!"
"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."
"But the Solar System!" I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."[/quote][quote=" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle#Spiritualism.2C_Freemasonry"]
[float=right][img3="[b][color=#0000FF]One of 5 photographs of Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies (1917)[/color][/b]"]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Cottingley_Fairies_1.jpg[/img3][/float]<<Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects. In 1887 he joined the Society for Psychical Research and was also initiated as a Freemason (26 January 1887) at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. He was a member of the renowned supernatural organisation The Ghost Club. In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his own flat in Bloomsbury; Doyle declared the clairvoyance manifestations to be genuine. In 1920, Doyle debated the claims of Spiritualism with the notable sceptic Joseph McCabe at Queen's Hall in London.
Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a novella on the subject, The Land of Mist, featuring the character [url=http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=35379&p=250514&hilit=Professor+Challenger#p250514]Professor Challenger[/url]. The Coming of the Fairies (1922) appears to show that Conan Doyle was convinced of the veracity of the five Cottingley Fairies photographs (which decades later were exposed as a hoax). He reproduced them in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits.
In 1922, the psychical researcher Harry Price accused the spirit photographer William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope, but further evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers. Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and claimed if he persisted to write "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Harry Houdini. Price wrote "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope." Because of the exposure of Hope and other fraudulent spiritualists, Doyle led a mass resignation of eighty-four members of the Society for Psychical Research, as they believed the Society was opposed to spiritualism.
Doyle and spiritualist William Thomas Stead were duped into believing Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers, both claiming that the Zancigs used telepathy. In 1924 Julius and Agnes Zancig confessed that that their mind reading act was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick method they had used, under the title Our Secrets!! in a London newspaper.
Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Doyle had a motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and that [url=http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=35379&p=250514&hilit=Professor+Challenger#p250514]The Lost World[/url] contains several encrypted clues regarding his involvement in the hoax.>>[/quote]