Monday 21 June 2021

An Old Proverb

"Starfog."

Daven Laure:

"'We have a proverb - so old that it's reputed to have originated on Earth - "It is a capital offense to theorize in advance of the data."'" (p. 750)

"'What do you think you might find?'
"Targovi shrugged with his tendrils. "It is a capital offense to theorize in advance of the data. I have my suspicions, naturally."
-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 354.

This saying appears twice in Flandry's Legacy and, on its first appearance, Targovi does not acknowledge that it is a quotation but who originally said it?

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” — "A Scandal in Bohemia" (1891)

This quote from the short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” was published in the collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. While sometimes Holmes’s steadfast application of logic can come off a bit impractical, this is one of his more sensible principles. Hope and the desire to be right can be dangerous things when assumptions come into play, and Holmes’s detached approach provides a quicker and less painful path to the truth.
-copied from here.

4 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Confirmation bias is a human tendency of immense power.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

As Stirling said, confirmation bias is a real danger!

And we see two examples of how Anderson was a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I can imagine A. Conan Doyle and the Great Detective being long forgotten by Daven Laure's time. But I can see Targovi being able to read such Terran classics and so easily alluding to them. People still knew of Doyle and his Detective in Flandry's time.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

We avoid confirmation bias, as far as possible, by seriously considering and responding to views antithetical to our own.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree. AND accepting such views if vindicated by evidence and facts.

Ad astra! Sean