How Does Sherlock Holmes Observe

Sherlock Holmes has been called, “the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has ever seen.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle shows us just how this reasoning “machine” operates in . Holmes shows how his canny wits, keen observation skills, and analytical reasoning affirm him to be a highly intelligent individual. Sherlock observes countless things that most people would not notice. Holmes was forever having his companion Watson talk him about things he observed. After Watson makes a comment about his eyes being as good as Sherlock’s, Holmes challenges him to see how well he notices things. He asks him how many stairs there are in the hall, and even though Watson had been up and down them hundreds of times, he cannot answer the question of how many there are. Thus Sherlock makes the comment, “You see, but you do not observe.” (g. 21) Sherlock Holmes reveals just how much he observes, when he is able to tell Watson what he has been doing by just

Sherlock proves this statement to be wrong, when he uses his observation and reasoning skills to tell what Watson had been up to. Holmes simply uses his senses to make an educated guess on the life of Watson. He starts by observing that there are cuts on Watson's shoe, resulting from someone roughly scraping the shoes to remove mud, thus Sherlock deducts that Watson had a clumsy servant girl and had had been out in the rain. Holmes also uses his sense of smell as well as sight to determine Watson had become a doctor. The sight of a black mark on Watson’s finger and a budge under his hat, leads Sherlock to make the assumption that the mark was silver nitrate and the budge was where he hid his stethoscope. Sherlock Holmes could also smell iodoform, a chemical doctor’s use as an antiseptic, on Watson. Using his analytical reasoning and keen observation skills, Sherlock confers who a person is before he even meets