Brain Attic

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Posted by jimspoon
May 28, 2014 at 06:15 AM

a post in the “scheduling” thread made me think of Sherlock Holmes’ Brain Attic. I imagine almost everybody here knows about it already, but just in case, here is the relevant passage from “A Study in Scarlet”. (Watson, having just moved in with Holmes, is trying to figure out what Holmes is all about).

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

Posted by Prion
May 28, 2014 at 07:59 AM

Thanks Jim,
very interesting although the quoted passage is only thought-provoking in the sense that I’d like to put my finger on why it is wrong more than anything else.
The assumption Holmes (Doyle) rests his argument upon is that all thoughts are logically independent. I disagree and happily collect interesting thoughts and details from different fields, knowing that the ones that make sense in the large picture are doing so by connecting themselves to other pieces that are already part of my outlook on the world. I can live with the fact that it will be mostly the unconnected thoughts that will fall through the cracks of my self-cleaning attic, nothing that is well-connected will be elbowed out by something that failed to integrate itself in the first place and will never be hinted at by looking at the vast majority of the other stuff in my attic, thank you very much.
But I guess the fact that the links among items are as interesting as the items themselves hardly needs mentioning in this forum.
Prion

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
May 28, 2014 at 02:38 PM

With me it’s more like a moldy cellar.

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