The Use of the Empirical Method by John Henry Newman and Arthur Conan Doyle

Abstract

The Use of the Empirical Method by John Henry Newman and Arthur Conan Doyle Jeffrey Dirk Wilson (bio) Sir arthur ignatius conan doyle (1859–1930) and Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801–1890) lived at a time when it seemed that science could answer all of life’s questions. Empiricism—the philosophy of basing all conclusions on experience, of which the experimental method is an obvious scientific expression—not only provided the intellectual background for both men, but they both embraced it with opposite outcomes. Empiricism led Doyle out of the Catholic Church and Newman into it. Perhaps contrary to expectation, Newman in the Catholic Church was at peace with empiricism, while Doyle out of the Catholic Church was restless about empiricism to the point of rupture, leading him to embrace occult spiritualism. In short, Newman was more thoroughly Holmesian in his deployment of the empirical method than was the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Thus, Newman concludes empirically that the foundational claims of Christianity and the truth of the Catholic Church are warranted. By comparison with Newman’s empiricism, the limits of Doyle’s deployment of the empirical method become clear. This essay arises primarily from a juxtaposition of texts by Doyle and Newman. In the case of Doyle, the texts considered are from the Sherlock Holmes corpus and his autobiographical writings. In Newman’s case, the text considered is his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. While secondary material is occasionally referenced, the aim here is to guide the reader in a consideration of how the empirical method plays out in the thought of Doyle and Newman when their texts are read together.1 [End Page 5] Doyle created two competing exemplars of the experimental method in the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, both men of science but in two sharply different ways. Holmes is embodied logic, rigorously submitting every twinge of passion and appetite to the dictates of reason. He is the perfect Cartesian man for whom “I” is the “thinking thing,” and whatever does not think is not essentially part of “me.” When Holmes has no grist for his mill of thinking, he is at a loss. Bored at the beginning of The Sign of Four, he descends to the seven-percent solution of cocaine, self-administered intravenously. When the case is solved, he reaches for the cocaine once again.2 Even if the most benign view of cocaine in the nineteenth century is assumed (i.e., that it was a useful medicine) for what illness was Holmes treating himself but ennui? We find this exchange at the end of “The Red-Headed League,” Watson addressing Holmes: “You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.” “It saved me from ennui,” he answered yawning. “Alas! I already feel it closing upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from commonplaces of existence.” These little problems help me to do so.” “And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I. He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some use,” he remarked. “‘L’homme c’est rien—l’oeuvre c’est tout,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.”3 [End Page 6] Therein is the problem: in the empiricist model, “the work” does not point outside itself. The discovery, the conclusion, in and of itself, has nothing to say about the meaning of life. For the human as scientist, there is no difference between walking a little old lady across the street and shoving her under a bus. For science, they are naked facts, devoid of value. It is instructive that Doyle was increasingly drawn to occult spiritualism during and after World War I with forty million people dead, both military and civilian. The scientific method had nothing to say to a world in anguish. In those years, Doyle—unlike Holmes—realizes the limits of materialism, so why was Doyle unable to reclaim the heritage of his youth? Why could Doyle as author not rescue Sherlock Holmes from ennui? By contrast with Holmes, Watson was a man of science in...