The Process of Knowing in Literature


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Sherlock Holmes is a fictional charachter in popular novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,a Scotsman, between the 1880s and 1910s. Holmes and his partner Dr. Watson are a famous imaginary crime solving duo who crack the toughest cases. Sherlock Holmes uses the power of reason and deduction and the five steps in the Process of Knowing to solve crimes. Holmes is famous for using his powers of deduction and reason to find the truth in crimes where it seems that the truth is lost.

Perceiving
Holmes starts by asking questions about the crime of those who call on his services and inspecting the crime scene to gain the facts. Holmes uses the knowledge he takes in from his senses (hearing,sight, and touch) by perceiving the crime to determine where to look next.

Categorizing
The next step Holmes takes in his path to solving crimes is to categorize what he has perceived from the crime scenes into evidence categories. He doesn't take anything for granted in his attempt to solve the crimes he assumes that anyone may or may not be guilty of the crime and not let stereotypes get in the way.

Evaluating
Holmes cannot use some information that he receives from the questions he asks and his inspection of the crime scene because it would be excess data. The people whom he asks questions from may or may not be telling him the truth when they answer him because they may be hiding the fact that they committed the crime from him. Holmes must evaluate inside his own mind.

Symbolizing
Sherlock Holmes is very eloquent and gives very good explaination of the connections that he makes from evidence to come to his conclusions. People often believe that he began explaining his deductive reasoning to his partner Watson with the phrase "elementary my dear Watson..." However this saying never appears in any of the sixty books written on Holmes, so it is a simple misconception, but it shows that Holmes was good at using connotations of the evidence he gathers to come to conclusions and then easily and clearly explain it to his partner.

Testing Holmes tests his beliefs throughout his case by applying the evidence against someone to the situation and seeing how the expectation of the person who commited the crime compares to the person he believes committed the crime. Holmes's deductive reasoning is a test in itself because he must make sure that the conclusion he comes to make sense in the situation of the case otherwise he has condemned the wrong man. However, Holmes's explaination of the evidence proves that the conclusion must be true because he doesnt commit any of the five common thinking errors in his reasoning.

Main Source for Information: wikipedia.org

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