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#163281 11/08/2006 2:19 PM
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This is what Sherlock Holmes actually "said":
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

From The Sign of the Four, pg. 41. Oxford University Press, 1993.

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Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

- M.Twain

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Is it possible to eliminate the impossible when in principe everything is always possible, though less probable?

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'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

-John Keats

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Um, and why do you aver this so vehemently, Jackie ma chère?

(oops, did I skip a thread somewhere and the subject is evident to everybody else )

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Quote:

Is it possible to eliminate the impossible when in principe everything is always possible, though less probable?



Probable, possible, limitless

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why do you aver this so vehemently Oh, we had a thread or two a long time ago mentioning some variations on this saying, and how it has gotten twisted and changed; and I recently decided it was time I read some Arthur Conan Doyle. So when I saw the phrase in its originality, I thought I'd post it for the edification of all...'s'all.

#163288 11/09/2006 12:06 PM
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Quote:

why do you aver this so vehemently Oh, we had a thread or two a long time ago mentioning some variations on this saying, and how it has gotten twisted and changed; and I recently decided it was time I read some Arthur Conan Doyle. So when I saw the phrase in its originality, I thought I'd post it for the edification of all...'s'all.




Everything's according to Doyle.


TEd
#163289 11/09/2006 10:04 PM
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you card.


formerly known as etaoin...
#163290 11/09/2006 10:10 PM
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Quote:

This is what Sherlock Holmes actually "said":




however improbable
-ron (chopped liver) o.

#163291 11/09/2006 10:25 PM
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Quote:

This is what Sherlock Holmes actually "said":




"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must be the truth?" - The Sign of the Four

"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet

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Conan Doyle wrote in the period before Goedel, when everything was much simpler..

#163293 11/10/2006 10:08 AM
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> Conan Doyle wrote in the period


angels on the head of a pin, eh?


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angels on the head of a pin, eh?

This was still a whole lot earlier

#163295 11/11/2006 12:37 AM
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chopped liver Oops! Sorry--reckon I kind of lost my mind, there. But I was so excited to come across it for myself...


Moderated by  Jackie 

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