[ycan]

> Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a keen spiritualist, even consulted a medium to attempt to solve the mystery of her disappearance.

This bit was the most surprising part of the article for me, given the themes of science and materialism in Sherlock Holmes books. Looking a bit into it, Doyle really seems to have been into Spiritualism for some bizarre reason [0].

[0] https://arthurconandoyle.co.uk/spiritualist

[gumby]

Conan Doyle was into a lot of pseudoscientific stuff and it runs through his Holmes stories. He didn't think of it as "pseudo-" at all so just presented it as run of the mill science, like the hoary "10% of your brain" nonsense. Holmes' "reasoning" processes were often pretty dubious too.

I read those stories as a kid (we had a huge single volume for some reason) and tried to figure out how to emulate Holmes' thinkings so I could be as smart as him (and not be the hapless Watson). That resulted in quite a bit of time in the library chasing things down which caused me to learn that things in books aren't always true and that adults were often idiots. So I can't say that reading Sherloc Holmes stories were bad for me, but the process destroyed any interest I had in anything Holmes related.

[emodendroket]

Really? Most of the stories are well done even if not every bit of his "ratiocination" holds up. I feel like one can enjoy them for what they are without trying to take them as real-life forensic science.

[tetris11]

It just sits a bit bitter when you used to look at him as an unconventional man who employed the scientific process of deduction to solve his cases.... only for you to later realise that he was applying abductive reasoning the whole time, whilst claiming otherwise and chasing down any lead like a mad dog. Holmes wasn't smart, just driven.

[krapp]

That's one of the problems with mystery writing - the protagonist can never be smarter than the author. The books can say Sherlock Holmes is a genius polymath intellect with brilliant deductive capabilities but he was written by a guy who believed the Cottingley Fairies were real, so...

[weeblewobble]

Holmes does use a scientific process. He forms hypotheses and tests them, and when they are proven wrong he synthesizes the new information and then repeats until he solves the case.

[emodendroket]

Wasn’t the whole concept of detective work fairly new when the books were being written? The earliest Holmes stories are quite indebted to Poe’s work with C. Auguste Dupin and he invented the form.

[the_af]

I really like Sherlock stories, but yes, they are seldom all that rational.

I remember in one story Sherlock concludes a man must be smart because his hat size is large. I mean, come on, even in Doyle's time this would have raised more than one eyebrow.

I don't hold this against the stories because my enjoyment of them is more about the mystery and Sherlock as a character, rather than they actually making rational sense.

[tomcam]

Even more interesting is the fact that he and Harry Houdini were friends, but they were split over the life after death question. Houdini was sick of all the charlatans, and made the focus of his life’s work in his final years to prove them wrong. It obviously created a wedge between them.

Houdini by that time was a megastar. He was easily the most famous person in the western world for about a generation. His fame dwarfed that of people like Doyle, Agatha Christie, or Oscar Wilde.

[mongol]

Was he more famous than Chaplin?

[TylerE]

Their careers mostly didn’t overlap. There were a few years, but Houdini was earlier.

Even given that, I’d say yes.

The thing about Houdini was not just that he was famous M, but he really didn’t have any competition.

Chaplin, even at the height of his fame, there were others that weren’t far behind (Buster Keaton, say)

[mongol]

That argument seems to depend on how famous he was relative other celebrities. But in absolute numbers, how many people knew about them, I think should count higher.

[TylerE]

There is no objective, absolute measure of fame.

[n3storm]

At that time "mesmerism" was sold as possible new branch of science that will properly explain after life, ghost, etc. without religion.

Obviously was a reboot/remake/remix "product" perfectly crafted for a new public as sceptics like Sir Conan Doyle.

[babyshake]

It's easy in hindsight to see these types of things as being ridiculous and obviously bunk. We do have the equivalents today, although YMMV on what you think is the modern day "mesmerism".

[the_af]

Why wouldn't today's "mesmerisms" be just as ridiculous? I don't think the mockery is about "absurd things people back then believed" but about "gullible people who will believe all sorts of things".

I think Conan Doyle was a very gullible man for his time. He would have been gullible for today's quakery if he was still alive.

[n3storm]

They may started as legit investigations but I doubt they did not realise soon it was a dead end and still keep selling seances and look for funds to keep their research.

[vajrabum]

Maybe, but the chronology is a little off--Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) famous for mesmerism (hypnosis).

[n3storm]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355869037_Arthur_Co...

[the_af]

Arthur Conan Doyle famously embarrassed himself with the Cottingley Fairies fake [1]. A grown man, believing in fairies -- small women with butterfly wings -- based on some dodgy (doctored) photographs. He went beyond believing in them; he actually promoted the case.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

[standardUser]

That Wikipedia page is worth the read. It's amazing how many people they duped! The photos are unedited but they include cardboard cutouts. It's immediately obvious to my 21st Century eyes that the fairies are drawings, but apparently they fooled a lot of people.

The 5th photo is the only one that doesn't look immediately like a cutout. It's believed to have been the result of a double exposure, but one of the women maintained until her death that the 5th photo was genuine.

The photos: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/english-literat...

[the_af]

I don't laugh at the technology itself -- today those photos look ridiculous but I believe people could find them realistic back then.

The dumb thing is believing fairies exist at all. If I see "convincing" evidence of fairies, with today's technology, I would still remain skeptical. It would take a lot more for me to even begin to wonder. Because fairies don't exist, we know where they come from in folklore and literature, and there's so much evidence they don't exist (along with unicorns, the Yeti, gremlins, etc) that a couple of convincing photographs or videos is simply not enough.

Conan Doyle wouldn't have been fooled had he been a skeptical, inquiring mind. Alas! He was just gullible.

Famously, Conan Doyle had Sherlock claim:

> When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Unfortunately Doyle, because he so wanted to believe, didn't really eliminate the impossible. He carelessly dismissed the most obvious option: that the two girls were playing him for a fool.

[galaxyLogic]

Yes but we must also consider what he thought would be the benefit of promoting the fairy stories for him? Of course, fame. The famous person who discovered and proved to the world that fairies exist.

Doyle was not a scientist but he admired scientists, discoverers of truths and he desired to be one. He also desired that other people should believe him, that would give him great power.

Think about all those conspiracy theories floating in US today, why do people spread them? It's a Ponzi-scheme, the originators of a conspiracy get great power by having many followers who believe them.

The other side of it is that of course people want to believe great stories that might prove to them afterlife will be better than the current one. JFK is still alive, anybody?

Fairies Wear Boots - Black Sabbath

[bratwurst3000]

Hahaha this is a good article. I love the part where the father didn’t believe them but the mother did and kind of published the photographs. And they did it only because of an argument with their mother.

Could something like flat earth theory have started like this? A bad joke that people believed and it got hyped not because it is true but because idiots believing it is kind of fun.

[the_af]

Today? I think most flat-earthers are indeed having fun with an elaborate, long-running joke. Some even sort of admit it. (And some are truly deranged, of course).

Back then? Flat earth made all the sense in the world, according to the empirical observations possible at the time. Only it wasn't able to explain some phenomena (e.g ships "sinking" over the horizon), and so evidence accumulated against it, eventually.

[jahnu]

Well Newton was seriously into alchemy so you never can tell.

[pcl]

From a scientific standpoint, nuclear fission is pretty much alchemy, right? I feel like we use the term to dismiss quacks, but changing one element into another is literally something we now know how to do.

Lead (atomic number 82) isn’t even that far from gold (atomic number 79).

[krapp]

Except the alchemists weren't practicing nuclear physicists, nor did they actually ever turn lead into gold through nuclear fission, nor would anything in their philosophy have led to doing so, either in theory or practice.

Just because it happens to be physically possible to turn lead into gold using a model that alchemists would never have even comprehended (as their principles were based on hermeticism and religion, not experimental science) doesn't mean they weren't quacks, or that they were half right. They were quacks, and it's OK to see them as such.

[the_af]

Alchemy was always quackery. It might have been proto-chemistry, but the minute it adopted scientific method it stopped being alchemy.

The problem with alchemy is that there was no rhyme or reason to its method, other than mysticisim; it wasn't scientific in nature.

If it sparked chemistry, that's a good thing; but it doesn't stop it from being quakery.

[COGlory]

Alchemy, by virtue of association with hermeticism, gets an unnecessarily bad reputation. We know it to be mostly false today, but it really did help develop chemistry.

[pests]

We live in an age of technical marvel but the goalposts have constantly shifted so nothing feels amazing anymore.

[permo-w]

chemistry is harder than physics

[ghkbrew]

Chemistry is physics.

[bratwurst3000]

Partly yes. But in reality it is much try and error. It hasn’t mostly the hard math that physics has. It’s more “what happens most times has to be true because it is replicable” Physics would be more “because this happens regularly it fits nearly this formula” and more science based on mathematics then try and error like chemistry.

Electrical engineering is more physics than chemistry for example

[permo-w]

chemistry follows the rules of physics

[pvorb]

that's relative

[b112]

have been into Spiritualism for some bizarre reason

Most religions have afterlifes, and that implies some kind of spiritualism. And a mere 50+ years ago, Christianity was almost universally accepted in the West.

[morelisp]

Spiritualism is a specific movement which all major branches of Christianity and most other major world religions reject.

[b112]

Indeed.

But the concept of an invisible spirit, which leaves your body upon death, (or is created by an omnipotent being upon death), is the commonality.

Spirits are spirits, be they called souls, vapours, spirits, or what not. And everyone believed in life after death, in the spiritual form.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first rejected the Catholic faith of his Irish mother and father, and then passed through a phase of agnosticism.

Speaking of rejection, Agatha Christie was so deeply devoted to the Tridentine form of the Catholic Mass, that she signed a petition that resulted in Papal permission to extend celebrations of this Mass beyond the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. That permission became known as the Agatha Christie Indult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie_indult

[galaxyLogic]

But Christianity is irrational because it is based on Bible, and there are so many contradictions in the Bible. So whether Christianity rejects or approves Spiritualism doesn't tell us much.

Of course Christianity rejects ALL other forms of irrational belief. And so do all other "true" religions.

Buddhism is relatively cool however, it focuses on how we can alleviate suffering of living beings, not of spirits.

[mighmi]

> contradictions in the Bible

The church selected the relevant books, written by many authors over 1000 years. While some evangelical sects may claim internal consistency, it's mostly a straw man. The sources/purposes of the relevant books explain most inconsistencies already (namely that most Jewish law doesn't apply to gentiles, because Jesus was a new covenant with all peoples.)

Gospel harmonies deal with the biggest hole: The gospels don't have any reason to be inconsistent. But that's easy to respond to too: They were written in response to other writings, each other and popular ideas, in dialogue with each other, just as the "historical" books etc. or modern history books and internet comments are made in dialogue with each other. Christians say this approaches truth, where the order of events of Jesus' thorning are less relevant than his message of love etc.

This lens leads to many interesting readings, e.g. the bible can be seen as a vengeful god killing off other gods (by his chosen people killing worshipers of other gods) and then learning to be nice and instead choosing all peoples.

[galaxyLogic]

And, if you can't believe many parts of the Bible because they contradict each other, how could you believe that God has anything to do with the (creation of the) text of the Bible. Bible is clearly imperfect but we are supposed to believe that God is "perfect", because Bible says so.

[svieira]

Christianity is based on the conversation between God and His chosen people from the creation of the world until now, with that conversation moving towards and flowing from the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Second Person of the Trinity. Part of which is in the Bible (everything is not in the Bible alone - e. g. the list of the books of the Bible isn't in the Bible)

Mere Christianity by Lewis is a pretty good introduction to the idea, as is Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

[morelisp]

What the fuck does this have to do with the price of eggs?

[RobotToaster]

It's not really a surprise that some men of science try to apply a materialist approach to the spiritual. Wolfgang Pauli's work on the Pauli–Jung conjecture on synchronicity being another example.

[TylerE]

A bit like CS Lewis and Tolkien. Lewis is the one you’d expect to be religious based ont heir popular works, but nope.

[maleldil]

Lewis was quite religious himself. He wrote more nonfiction books, many of them Christian books, than fiction.

[smegger001]

Yes but he started out as an atheist and converted largely due to the influence of his friend Tolkien.

[emodendroket]

A lot of people speculate it had something to do with his son's death.