Book Review
Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
Prelude
The prelude introduces the things explored in the book. Maria Konnikova takes her audience back to her childhood days, narrating about her father and how he read them, Sherlock Holmes. The text is aimed at helping readers use their minds to observe the little things that happen around them. She gives an example of Holmes and Watson and how Holmes was observant yet Watson was ignorant, like most of the people. She goes on to point out a few things that people observe when they are young and how they forget them as they grow up. Her main aim to help people become mindful since mindfulness has more advantages than being mindless. The prelude helps the reader to understand what the book will entail. It introduces the characters we’ll encounter in the book.
Chapter one – Understanding (Yourself)
Chapter one opens up with a story on how the court of appeal in England was established. It was centred on observation. The author goes on to show us instances where Holmes uses observation to solve his investigative quests. She says that Holmes didn’t take his knowledge base for granted, but questioned the building blocks to come up with an explanation. This chapter focus on how deceptive simplicity is, and how wrong people are to assume that simplicity makes it right. The base of knowledge and observation offers all potential scenarios and explanations, something that would be erased by simplicity. She urges her readers to follow Sherlock Holmes by applying his approach, which is the scientific approach. They should “frame the problem, observe, hypothesise, test and deduce, and repeat.” She names the two systems of thought as the Watson system, which is fast and judgmental and the Holmes system which is thoughtful, reflective and cool. The author argues that even though Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character, his philosophy is doable since many detectives have applied it. She urges her readers to be motivated to be mindful. It is not an easy habit, but it gets better with practice. This chapter helps readers understand how they think and how they can change. It develops Holmes and his system of thinking, which will be developed further by the text.