For an integrated discussion of the mind, its evolution, and its natural abilities, there are few better sources than Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate and How the Mind Works.
Chapter One: The Scientific Method of the Mind
For the history of Sherlock Holmes and the background of the Conan Doyle stories and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s life, I’ve drawn heavily on several sources: Leslie Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes; Andrew Lycett’s The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes; and John Lellenerg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley’s Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. While the latter two form a compendium of information on Conan Doyle’s life, the former is the single best source on the background for and various interpretations of the Holmes canon.
For a taste of early psychology, I recommend William James’s classic text, The Principles of Psychology. For a discussion of the scientific method and its history, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Much of the discussion of motivation, learning, and expertise draws on the research of Angela Duckworth, Ellen Winner (author of Gifted Children: Myths and Realities), and K. Anders Ericsson (author of The Road to Excellence). The chapter also owes a debt to the work of Daniel Gilbert.
Chapter Two: The Brain Attic
One of the best existing summaries of the research on memory is Eric Kandel’s In Search of Memory. Also excellent is Daniel Schacter’s The Seven Sins of Memory.
John Bargh continues to be the leading authority on priming and its effects on behavior. The chapter also draws inspiration from the work of Solomon Asch and Alexander Todorov and the joint research of Norbert Schwarz and Gerald Clore. A compilation of research on the IAT is available via the lab of Mahzarin Banaji.
Chapter Three: Stocking the Brain Attic
The seminal work on the brain’s default network, resting state, and intrinsic natural activity and attentional disposition was conducted by Marcus Raichle. For a discussion of attention, inattentional blindness, and how our senses can lead us astray, I recommend Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simon’s The Invisible Gorilla. For an in-depth look at the brain’s inbuilt cognitive biases, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. The correctional model of observation is taken from the work of Daniel Gilbert.
Chapter Four: Exploring the Brain Attic
For an overview of the nature of creativity, imagination, and insight, I recommend the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, including his books Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention and Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. The discussion of distance and its role in the creative process was influenced by the work of Yaacov Trope and Ethan Kross. The chapter as a whole owes a debt to the writings of Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein.
Chapter Five: Navigating the Brain Attic
My understanding of the disconnect between objective reality and subjective experience and interpretation was profoundly influenced by the work of Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson, including their groundbreaking 1977 paper, “Telling More Than We Can Know.” An excellent summary of their work can be found in Wilson’s book, Strangers to Ourselves, and a new perspective is offered by David Eagleman’s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.
The work on split-brain patients was pioneered by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. For more on its implications, I recommend Gazzaniga’s Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain.
For a discussion of how biases can affect our deduction, I point you once more to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham’s Witness for the Defense is an excellent starting point for learning more about the difficulty of objective perception and subsequent recall and deduction.
Chapter Six: Maintaining the Brain Attic
For a discussion of learning in the brain, I once more refer you to Daniel Schacter’s work, including his book Searching for Memory. Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit offers a detailed overview of habit formation, habit change, and why it is so easy to get stuck in old ways. For more on the emergence of overconfidence, I suggest Joseph Hallinan’s Why We Make Mistakes and Carol Tavris’s Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). Much of the work on proneness to overconfidence and illusions of control was pioneered by Ellen Langer (see “Prelude”).
Chapter Seven: The Dynamic Attic
This chapter is an overview of the entire book, and while a number of studies went into its writing, there is no specific further reading.
Chapter Eight: We’re Only Human
For more on Conan Doyle, Spiritualism, and the Cottingley Fairies, I refer you once more to the sources on the author’s life listed in chapter one. For those interested in the history of Spiritualism, I recommend William James’s The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.
Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind provides a discussion of the difficulty of challenging our own beliefs.
Postlude
Carol Dweck’s work on the importance of mindset is summarized in her book Mindset. On a consideration of the importance of motivation, see Daniel Pink’s Drive.
INDEX
activation, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10
activation spread, ref1, ref2
active perception, compared with passive perception, ref1
Adams, Richard, ref1
adaptability, ref1
ADHD, ref1
“The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” ref1, ref2
“The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” ref1, ref2, ref3
“The Adventure of the Creeping Man,” ref1
“The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” ref1, ref2
“The Adventure of the Dying Detective,” ref1
“The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” ref1
“The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
“The Adventure of the Priory School,” ref1, ref2, ref3
“The Adventure of the Red Circle,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
“The Adventure of the Second Stain,” ref1
“The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger,” ref1
“The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” ref1, ref2
affect heuristic, ref1
Anson, George, ref1
associative activation, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
astronomy, and Sherlock Holmes, ref1
Atari, ref1
attention, paying, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
attentional blindness, ref1
Auden, W. H., ref1
availability heuristic, ref1
Bacon, Francis, ref1
Barrie, J. M., ref1
base rates, ref1, ref2
Baumeister, Roy, ref1
Bavelier, Daphné, ref1
Bell, Joseph, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Bem, Daryl, ref1, ref2
bias, implicit, ref1, ref2, ref3
BlackBerry, ref1
brain
and aging process, ref1
baseline, ref1
cerebellum, ref1
cingulate cortex, ref1, ref2, ref3
corpus collosum, ref1
frontal cortex, ref1
hippocampus, ref1, ref2, ref3
parietal cortex, ref1
precuneus, ref1
prefrontal cortex, ref1
split, ref1, ref2, ref3
tempero-parietal junction (TPJ), ref1
temporal gyrus, ref1
temporal lobes, ref1
wandering, ref1, ref2
Watson’s compared with Holmes’, ref1
brain attic
contents, ref1, ref2
defined, ref1
levels of storage, ref1
and memory, ref1
structure, ref1, ref2
System Watson compared with System Holmes, ref1, re
f2
Watson’s compared with Holmes’s, ref1, ref2
Brett, Jeremy, ref1
capital punishment, ref1
Carpenter, William B., ref1
“The Case of the Crooked Lip,” ref1
cell phone information experiment, ref1
cerebellum, ref1
childhood, mindfulness in, ref1
cingulate cortex, ref1, ref2, ref3
cocaine, ref1
Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), ref1, ref2
common sense, systematized, ref1, ref2
compound remote associates, ref1
Conan Doyle, Arthur
becomes spiritualist, ref1
creation of Sherlock Holmes character, ref1
and fairy photos, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
and Great Wyrley sheep murders, ref1, ref2, ref3
and Joseph Bell, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
confidence, ref1, ref2. See also overconfidence
confirmation bias, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Copernican theory, ref1
corpus collosum, ref1, ref2
correspondence bias, ref1, ref2, ref3
Cottingley fairy photos, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
creativity, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
“The Crooked Man,” ref1, ref2, ref3
Crookes, William, ref1
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, ref1
Cumberbatch, Benedict, ref1
Dalio, Ray, ref1, ref2
Darwin, Charles, ref1
decision diaries, ref1
declarative memory, ref1
deduction, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
role of imagination, ref1, ref2
in The Sign of Four, ref1, ref2
in “Silver Blaze,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
in “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” ref1
in “The Crooked Man,” ref1, ref2
walking stick example in The Hound of the Baskervilles, ref1
default effect, ref1, ref2
default mode network (DMN), ref1
diary, writing, ref1
digital age, ref1
“The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” ref1, ref2
disguise, ref1, ref2
Disney, Walt, ref1
distance, psychological, ref1
distancing mechanisms
meditation as, ref1
through acquiring physical distance, ref1
through change in activity, ref1, ref2
distraction, ref1, ref2, ref3
Downey, Robert, Jr., ref1
Doyle, Arthur Conan. See Conan Doyle, Arthur
driving, learning, ref1, ref2, ref3
Dumas, Alexander, ref1
Duncker, Karl, ref1
Dweck, Carol, ref1, ref2
Edalji, George, ref1, ref2, ref3
Edison, Thomas, ref1
education
and aging process, ref1
Holmesian, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Einstein, Albert, ref1, ref2
emotion
Holmes’ view, ref1
and priming, ref1
Empire State Building experiment, ref1
engagement, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4. See also motivation
environment, ref1
Ericsson, K. Anders, ref1, ref2, ref3
event-related potentials (ERPs), ref1
exceptions, Holmes’ view, ref1
explicit memory, ref1
eyewitness testimony, ref1
fairy photos, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
Falk, Ruma, ref1
Fechner, Gustav Theodor, ref1
Feynman, Richard, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
filtering, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
foreign language learning, ref1
Fosbury, Dick, ref1
Frederick, Shane, ref1
frontal cortex, ref1
functional fixedness, ref1
Gardner, Edward, ref1
Gazzaniga, Michael, ref1
Gilbert, Daniel, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Gillette, William, ref1
Gollwitzer, Peter, ref1
Great Wyrley, Staffordshire, England, ref1, ref2
“The Greek Interpreter,” ref1
Green, C. Shawn, ref1
Griffiths, Frances, ref1, ref2, ref3
habit, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Haggard, Sir H. Rider, ref1
Haidt, Jonathan, ref1
halo effect, ref1
hard-easy effect, ref1
Havel, Václav, ref1
Heisenberg uncertainty principle, ref1
Hill, Elsie Wright. See Wright, Elsie
hippocampus, ref1, ref2, ref3
Hodson, Geoffrey, ref1
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr., ref1
Holmes, Sherlock
in “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” ref1, ref2, ref3
in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” ref1
in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” ref1, ref2, ref3
in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” ref1, ref2
in “The Adventure of the Creeping Man,” ref1
in “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” ref1
in “The Adventure of the Dying Detective,” ref1
in “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” ref1
in “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
in “The Adventure of the Priory School,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
in “The Adventure of the Red Circle,” ref1, ref2, ref3
in “The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger,” ref1
in “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” ref1
and astronomy, ref1
and brain attic concept, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
in “The Case of the Crooked Lip,” ref1
and cocaine, ref1
comparisons with Watson, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
as confident, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
in “The Crooked Man,” ref1, ref2
describes how he knew Watson came from Afghanistan, ref1
in “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” ref1
errors and limitations, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
first meets Watson, ref1, ref2
in “The Greek Interpreter,” ref1
in The Hound of the Baskervilles, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9
as hunter, ref1
hypothetical plane spotting experiment, ref1
in “The Lion’s Mane,” ref1, ref2, ref3
in “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” ref1
and mindfulness, ref1, ref2
in “The Musgrove Ritual,” ref1
need for Watson, ref1
“phlegmatic exterior,” ref1, ref2
in “The Problem of Thor Bridge,” ref1
as psychologist, ref1
in “The Red-Headed League,” ref1
role of emotion in thinking, ref1
in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” ref1
in The Sign of Four, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
in “Silver Blaze,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10
in “The Stockbroker’s Clerk,” ref1, ref2
in A Study in Scarlet, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
thinking process in The Hound of the Baskervilles, ref1
in The Valley of Fear, ref1, ref2
viewed by others, ref1
as visionary, ref1
well-known images, ref1
in “The Yellow Face,” ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
The Hound of the Baskervilles, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12
hunter mindset, ref1
imagination, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
and visualization, ref1
walking stick example in The Hound of the Baskervilles, ref1
Implicit Association Test (IAT), ref1, ref2, ref3
br /> implicit memory, ref1
impressions, ref1, ref2
improbability, ref1
induction, ref1n
inertia, ref1
inquisitiveness, ref1, ref2
instincts, filtering, ref1
intuition, ref1, ref2, ref3
James, William, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
Jerome, Jerome K., ref1
Jobs, Steve, ref1, ref2
juggling, ref1
Kahneman, Daniel, ref1, ref2
Kassam, Karim, ref1
Kodak, ref1, ref2, ref3
Kross, Ethan, ref1
Kruglanski, Arie, ref1
Krull, Douglas, ref1
Ladenspelder, Hans, ref1
Langer, Ellen, ref1
Lashley, Karl, ref1
learning. See also education
and aging process, ref1
walking stick example in The Hound of the Baskervilles, ref1
Libby, Scooter, ref1
lightbulb moments, ref1
Lincoln, Abraham, ref1
“The Lion’s Mane,” ref1, ref2, ref3
location, as learned association, ref1
Lodge, Oliver, ref1
Loft us, Elizabeth, ref1
long-term memory, declarative compared with procedural, ref1
Lucretius, ref1, ref2
Maier, Norman, ref1
“The Man with the Twisted Lip,” ref1
meditation, ref1
memory
and brain attic, ref1
consolidation in, ref1, ref2
encoding, ref1
and motivation, ref1, ref2
short-term compared with long-term, ref1, ref2
Meredith, George, ref1
mimic octopus, ref1
mind
two-system basis, ref1
wandering, ref1, ref2
Watson system compared with Holmes system, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
mindfulness, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
history, ref1
in moving to system Holmes-governed thinking, ref1
walking stick example in The Hound of the Baskervilles, ref1
mindset, ref1, ref2, ref3
Mischel, Walter, ref1, ref2
misinformation effect, ref1
Moses, Anna (Grandma), ref1
motivation, ref1, ref2
Motivation to Remember (MTR), ref1
Mueller, Jennifer, ref1
multitasking, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
“The Musgrove Ritual,” ref1
Neisser, Ulric, ref1
Newcomb, Simon, ref1
objectivity, ref1, ref2
observation
with a capital O, ref1