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.
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
- M.Twain
Is it possible to eliminate the impossible when in principe everything is always possible, though less probable?
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
-John Keats
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
)
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.
Conan Doyle wrote in the period before Goedel, when everything was much simpler..
> Conan Doyle wrote in the period
angels on the head of a pin, eh?
angels on the head of a pin, eh?
This was still a whole lot earlier
chopped liver Oops! Sorry--reckon I kind of lost my mind, there. But I was so excited to come across it for myself...