Holmes in Everyday Life (2)
Sherlockian Way of Thinking
2. How to Use Each Method in Daily Situations (2)
C. Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning: Finding direction under uncertainty
1) Definition:
Form a hypothesis, deduce what should follow if it is true, then compare those predictions with observation to test the hypothesis.
2) Scene:
A friend keeps postponing plans and suddenly goes quiet. Hypothesis: “Perhaps something I said caused hurt.” If so, a likely observation would be: “Communication dropped off right after our last conversation.” Now check timelines and emotional cues, and seek a resolution consistent with the facts.
3) Practical cues:
Don’t rely on instinct alone. Form one or two testable hypotheses and look for confirming/disconfirming evidence.
Especially useful in conflict, relationships, and error analysis, where uncertainty is high.
D. Abduction: Reading emotion and relationship
1) Definition:
Abduction selects, from among many possibilities, the most natural and convincing explanation for an observed phenomenon.
2) Scene:
A teammate is silent throughout the meeting, replies curtly, avoids eye contact. Possible reasons abound: fatigue; personal issues; frustration with the direction; disappointment or hurt directed at you. Abduction chooses the most plausible account by weighing objective cues with context.
3) Practical cues:
Abduction demands not only logic but sensitivity to context and feeling.
Before judging, ask, “What would naturally produce this reaction?” and compare candidate stories against the situation at hand.
E. Retroduction: Working backward from a result
1) Definition:
Retroduction starts from an outcome and reconstructs the causes and path that likely produced it: “If this is the result, what must have preceded it?”
2) Scene:
On your desk lies a small note: “Thank you for yesterday.” From whom? For what? Retrace yesterday’s moments—perhaps a quiet gesture you made became a comfort the other person did not articulate at the time. From a tiny result, you reconstruct the route and circumstance.
3) Practical cues:
Powerful in emotion interpretation, incident analysis, and user-behavior analysis.
Ask, “This result sits here now; along which two or three paths might it have arrived?”
F. The Method of Elimination: Tidying choices and judgments
1) Definition:
List all candidates, then remove—one by one—those that violate conditions, until only the best-fitting option remains.
2) Scene:
You’re planning the weekend. Three options left: cinema, exhibition, hiking. Conditions:
low cost, indoors, no long walking.
→ Hiking is out (outdoor + long walking).
→ Cinema vs. exhibition → the exhibition has free entry.
Final choice: exhibition.
3) Practical cues:
When things feel messy, begin with what to rule out.
Turn “This doesn’t feel right” into explicit eliminators.
Narrowing the space of possibilities is often faster than hunting the single right answer.
G. Summary: Reasoning is a habit, not a party trick
Holmes’s methods are not the refined tools of a solitary genius; they are practicable frames that clarify life, stack thought, design questions, and make sense of conflict and contradiction. Far from belonging only to special situations, all six methods fit almost any scene of daily life.
What remains is simple: practice—apply these tools to the questions of your own day.
