BEYOND THE WORDS

Between the Lines of “Sherlock Holmes and the Art of Reasoning”

Scattered notes on how to improve your reasoning skills starting from Sherlock Holmes’s novels

A few days ago, my wife recommended a book on how the mind works, how to reason better, and how to sharpen one’s mental skills. Unlike other books on the same subject, Massimo Polidoro — a famous scientific popularizer — starts from the novels of Sherlock Holmes to address what the mind is, what scientific reasoning is, and what we can do to make the best use of our abilities.

It’s a very interesting book, full of food for thought. Here is the table of contents of the book and some notes. As soon as I have some time, I will organize the notes better and discuss them in more depth.

• Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Art of Reasoning
• Author: Massimo Polidoro
• Original Language: Italian

Table of Contents

Introduction: Sherlock Holmes and the art of thinking

• Can you become like Sherlock Holmes? (no, he’s a fictional character)

A wonderful Brain

• The “10 percent solution” (myth)