Key Quote
“"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"”
Sherlock Holmes · Chapter 6
Focus: “eliminated”
Holmes's most famous axiom encapsulates his deductive method — truth is reached not by finding what IS but by removing what CANNOT be. Logic operates through elimination, not intuition.
Technique 1 — LOGICAL SYLLOGISM / CONDITIONAL STRUCTURE
The sentence follows a strict conditional ('When... whatever... must') that mirrors the logical structure it describes. The 'when... must' framework presents deduction as inevitable (unavoidable): once the impossible is removed, truth is not discovered but revealed — it was always there, hidden behind false possibilities. The grammatical inevitability mirrors logical inevitability.
The concessive clause 'however improbable' is crucial: Holmes acknowledges that truth may be surprising, uncomfortable, or counter-intuitive. This anticipates a key scientific principle — that evidence determines conclusions, not expectations. The word 'improbable' admits emotional resistance while the verb 'must' overrides it with logical necessity.
Key Words
RAD — PROGRESS
Holmes progresses through each case by systematically narrowing possibilities. His method is progressive by definition: each eliminated impossibility brings him closer to truth. The detective narrative IS a narrative of progress — from mystery to solution, ignorance to knowledge, chaos to order.
Key Words
Technique 2 — EPISTEMOLOGICAL APHORISM
This statement functions as an aphorism — a concise, memorable expression of a general truth. Its power comes from its apparent universality: Holmes claims not just a personal method but a universal law of reasoning. The statement aspires to the status of a mathematical theorem — permanently and universally true. Doyle positions Holmes not merely as a clever detective but as a philosopher of knowledge.
The verb 'eliminated' is violent — it means not just 'removed' but 'destroyed.' Holmes does not gently set aside impossibilities; he eliminates them. This aggressive language reveals the combative nature of Victorian rationalism: reason is not contemplative but militant, actively destroying error to reveal truth.
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Context (AO3)
VICTORIAN EMPIRICISM
Doyle wrote during the peak of empiricism — the belief that knowledge comes from observation and evidence. Holmes embodies the Victorian faith in science and reason as the ultimate tools for understanding the world, reflecting the influence of Darwin, Huxley, and Comte.
THE DETECTIVE AS SCIENTIST
The detective genre emerged alongside forensic science: Holmes's methods — examining traces, testing substances, logical deduction — mirror the developing forensic techniques of the 1880s. Holmes is explicitly a scientist: he runs experiments, publishes monographs, and approaches crime as a research problem.
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WOW — LOGOCENTRISM (Derrida)
Derrida's concept of logocentrism — Western culture's privileging of reason and logic as the ultimate sources of truth — finds its most celebrated literary expression in Holmes. Holmes assumes that logic can solve ALL problems, that truth is ALWAYS accessible to reason, and that the rational mind is the supreme instrument of knowledge. Derrida would argue that Holmes's confidence in elimination reveals the binary structure of logocentric thinking: truth/falsehood, possible/impossible, rational/irrational. These binaries suppress the ambiguity, uncertainty, and undecidability that Derrida sees as inherent in all systems of meaning. Holmes's method works brilliantly in fiction — but Derrida would ask whether real-world problems can ever be resolved through such clean elimination, or whether the 'impossible' and 'improbable' constantly bleed into each other, resisting the neat categories Holmes imposes.
Key Words