HiPhiS Seminar: “On the Nature of Sherlock Holmes’ ‘Deductions’”

Triolet Campus, IAE, Robert Reix Lecture Hall, Building 29, – Place Eugène Bataillon, Montpellier.
Free admission.

By Denis Vernant, philosopher of logic and language, professor emeritus at the University of Grenoble-Alpes.

The successes of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes are generally attributed to his deductive abilities. In fact, his lines of reasoning leading to the arrest of the culprit are all instances of abduction. Unlike deduction and induction, abduction is a specific type of inference that involves formulating hypotheses about the presumed cause of an unexpected event.
We will first propose defining abduction as a procedure combining logical reasoning and praxeological inquiry involving empirical data.
We will illustrate its inventive capacity by recalling Kepler’s discovery of the elliptical nature of the planetary orbits.
Finally, using Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “Silver Blaze” as an example, we will examine how Sherlock Holmes uncovers the thief’s identity.

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