Heliocentricity

The Man Who Counts, V.

We have found what has got to be an entirely unintended parallel between the Technic History and Sherlock Holmes. Wace asks Delp whether the Diomedeans know that their world goes around its sun:

"'Quite a few of the philosophers believe that,' said Delp. 'I'm a practical (?) one, myself, and never cared much one way or the other.'" (p. 159)

We find this conversation between Holmes and Watson:

My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

-copied from A Study In Scarlet, CHAPTER II.

Holmes' remarks are absurd. Any civilized person has to care whether the Earth goes around the sun. We cannot compartmentalize theoretical and practical knowledge. A brain is not like a little attic. In another story, he deduces that a man is intelligent because he has a large head! Intelligence is a matter of connections within the brain, not of its size, although it seems that this was not known then.