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How Does Sherlock Holmes Use Inductive Reasoning?

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“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation” (Sign of Four 6). Sherlock Holmes can not only solve the mysteries that are presented to him, but he can solve them with ease because of his reasoning skills. In particular, he mostly uses abductive reasoning, but sometimes he uses deductive and inductive reasoning. This also overlaps into mathematics, with proofs and inferences.
First, deductive reasoning is “a truth-guaranteeing type of reasoning, meaning that if the premises of a deductive argument are correct, then the conclusion must inescapably …show more content…

Sherlock Holmes uses many of the rules of inferences to come up with his conclusion. For my second example of abductive reasoning you could see it written out as; 1. Mr. Wilson wears an arc-and-compass breastpin. 2. If Mr. Wilson is a Freemason, then he would wear an arc-and-compass breastpin. 3. Therefore, Mr. Wilson is a Freemason. Simplified it would look like; 1. P. 2. If Q then P. 3. Therefore Q. This is the definition of modus ponens inference in math terms. Inferences can be turned into proofs by simply stating them in full sentences.
Not only does Sherlock use proofs, he uses indirect proofs. As Sherlock says, "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" which we call an indirect proof (The Speckled Band 164). The Silver Blaze has an excellent example, Sherlock deducts “that he must have gone to King's Pyland or to Mapleton. He is not at King's Pyland, therefore he is at Mapleton” (Silver Blaze 291). In the long run, the proofs and inferences just back up my conclusion that Sherlock’s reasoning skills are

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