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Sherlock Holmes and the Work of the Society for Psychical Research by Joyce McPherson

Victorians Institute Journal Digital Annex

Reconciling Doyle’s Paradox:
Sherlock Holmes and the Work of the Society for Psychical Research
Joyce McPherson, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
The establishment of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1882 reflected the spirit of scientific optimism during the Victorian era. Among scientists, philosophers and writers, the idea prevailed that science would break new frontiers. Just as the missing link would be found in evolutionary theory, the scientific basis of psychical phenomena would be discovered. The concept of “psychical research” itself presupposed a body of knowledge that lay just beyond the veil of current scientific inquiry and legitimized the work of the society. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a member of the SPR, created the character of Sherlock Holmes to embody the phenomena of sensory perceptions that are not only extraordinary but help interrogate the purpose of rational methodology. In this paper, I will place the literature of Sherlock Holmes in the historical context of the work of the SPR, and I will demonstrate how it represents Doyle's conclusions about the proper use of science to investigate paranormal phenomena.
The twenty-first century website of the SPR describes the society’s goal as “research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models” (SPR website); however, the original statement did not acknowledge the conflict between science and the paranormal. On the contrary, the SPR expressed hope that science would answer questions and add to psychic knowledge. Grattan-Guiness in his history of the society describes the original stated purpose as "to approach these varied problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned enquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems” (19). The SPR used the term psychical to denote supranormal phenomena, and for the purpose of this paper, the words psychical, supernatural, supranormal, and paranormal will be used interchangeably. The society popularized other words in the English language such as telepathy and telekinesis. Their work became so popular, that a fictionalized version of the society, called the "Psychical Research Society," was created for Victorian and Edwardian literature. During the early years, committees were created to explore phenomena including mesmerism, apparitions, mediums, and thought-transference. Optimism ran high, as expressed by Henry Sidgwick in his first presidential address to the society in 1883:
A generation ago the investigator of the phenomena of Spiritualism was in danger of being assailed by a formidable alliance of scientific orthodox and religious orthodoxy; but I think that this alliance is now harder to bring about. (qtd. in Oppenheimer 81)
The work of the SPR was encouraged by earlier promotion of science as the tool for innovation and discovery, as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which the possibility of a scientific breakthrough for creating life is explored. Mid-Victorian authors, such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were serious advocates of mesmerism and other psychical phenomena. By 1882, the ground was prepared for open-minded and critical evaluation of psychic claims through science. Members during these early years included physicist Balfour Stewart, economist Henry Sidgwick, future prime minister Arthur Balfour, American psychologist William James, chemist Sir William Crookes, physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, and the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine: Charles Richet—an impressive array of scientists and leaders who garnered a prestigious social and intellectual status for the work of the SPR. 
The influence of the SPR spread throughout culture, impacting later Victorian authors such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Dodgson (penname: Lewis Carroll), Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all members of the society. The key to understanding the impact of the SPR may lie in the scientific optimism expressed by both scientists and authors. Dan Burton and David Grandy, who studied the supernatural and science, concluded that nineteenth-century paranormal “was an accommodation to scientific reason, for many occultists felt that science would eventually come to embrace the spiritual and immaterial in its quest for universal understanding” (185).
The pervasive belief that science would open new possibilities is illustrated in the achievements of Sherlock Holmes, a detective who used both science and logic to solve puzzling crimes. In creating this superior logician, Doyle revealed the high value he placed on rational investigation, an ethic he would later apply to the examination of paranormal phenomena. The Red-Headed League provides a microcosm of the larger oeuvre of Sherlock Holmes and gives insight into Doyle's perspective. Perhaps the most compelling observation from the text is Doyle’s pronounced respect for science and logic. As with most of the short stories and novels, this mystery is narrated by Dr. Watson, a man of science who admires and validates the methods of Holmes. He carefully records both observations and the final process that the detective uses to deduce his astonishing conclusions, a parallel to the experimental method used by scientists. In addition, Doyle uses Holmes as an exemplar to elevate the utility of rational methodology. At the end of the tale, Watson narrates: “‘You reasoned it out beautifully,’ I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. ‘It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true’” (29). Doyle adorns Holmes with the super power of a logical method, which he wants his readers to admire, a valuable clue to the author’s perception of the value of science.
Some Holmes scholars, however, would argue that the detective’s unusual skills carry a different meaning. Anna Neill asserts in her study The Savage Genius of Sherlock Holmes that Doyle portrays in his fictional detective “the more obscure workings of genius, something which in turn anticipates the spiritualist focus of Doyle’s later work” (611). She defines genius as abilities that exceed the average, and in this way she forges a link to supranormal powers. She writes: “Holmes’s genius is … intuitive rather than rational, and as worthy an object of psychical investigation as are the strangest phenomena of the séance room” (611). By identifying the necessary component of Holmes’s success as an inborn intuition, she redefines psychical powers to include extreme faculties of intuition and deduction. She corroborates this viewpoint with quotes of Watson’s laudatory comments on his friend’s reasoning powers, which liken them to clairvoyance.
Though Neill considers Holmes’s intuition a “divinatory gift” (612), it does not fit the context of Doyle’s narrative. In The Red-Headed League, for example, Doyle reveals Holmes’s expectation of naturalistic explanations for unusual phenomena. He tells Watson: “…for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination” (19). As the aggregate of the Sherlock Holmes adventures will attest, there is always a scientific explanation for strange events. Though Neill cites Watson’s praise of the detective as indicators of Holmes’s psychic powers, the source of the praise must be taken into account. When Watson effuses “[Y]ou are a benefactor of the race” (27) in The Red-Headed League, he clearly reveals his hero-worship. As a result, intimations of paranormal abilities are put in their proper naturalistic context. Earlier in the same tale, he narrates: “Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals” (25). It is clear from the context that Watson does not believe Holmes literally has divine knowledge. Rather he uses the elevated language as another way to praise his hero. The context of Doyle’s narrative clearly situates Holmes’s powers in the material world and illustrates the author’s elevation of science and logic.
Another important observation from The Red-Headed League involves the significance of ancient wisdom. When Holmes reveals to his client, Mr. Jabez Wilson, how he deduced several personal details of his history, the man changes from amazement to disrespect. Holmes quotes: Omne ignotum pro magnifico (20), which translates: “Everything unknown is taken as magnificent.” Why does he quote this in Latin? Perhaps he wants to mystify or impress his simple client. On the other hand, he may wish to communicate to the sympathetic Watson, using Latin as a type of code, how his experience is corroborated by the ancients. The quote is taken from Tacitus’s Agricola, and may reveal a passing commentary on Doyle’s own admiration for the unknown. Most significantly, however, the appeal to Latin antiquities reveals Doyle’s deep respect for ancient wisdom, a theme he will develop further in his career as a spiritualist, pursuing the elemental principles of the world.
The veneration of ancient wisdom is a vital factor in Doyle’s approach to both science and the supranatural. In The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, Doyle wrote: “The ancients knew a great deal which we have forgotten” (133). He considered the contemporary study of psychic phenomena to be a modern discovery of old truth. In his spiritualist book The New Revelation, he wrote: “These phenomena … are, or should be, taking shape as the foundations of a definite system of religious thought, in some ways confirmatory of ancient systems, in some ways entirely new” (26). It is as though Doyle considered reality to be a single rope of which he held two ends—the wonder of the modern scientific world in one hand and the ancient wisdom of psychic phenomena in the other. He was determined to tie a knot that would bring the two together in a closed circle. His trust in spiritualist truth that transcended time gave him confidence that a scientific basis for psychic phenomena would be discovered.
Doyle joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1893 and remained a stalwart adherent to the founding philosophies. He contributed his own research and frequently spoke in defense of paranormal phenomena. Over the next three decades, the critical analysis conducted by the SPR led to debunking many psychical claims, but Doyle held firm. In a debate in 1920 with Joseph McCabe at Queen’s Hall in London, Doyle vigorously defended his beliefs despite scientific evidence that seemed to disprove them (McCabe 115). As the SPR veered increasingly toward exposing fraud rather than making progress in the field, Doyle led a mass resignation of eighty-four members in 1922 (Nelson 159). To understand Doyle’s stance despite the SPR’s extensive revelations of fraud, it is helpful to consider Peter Lamont’s thesis in “Spiritualism and a mid-Victorian crisis of evidence.” He studies the case of medium Daniel Dunglas Home, who convinced leading intellectuals of his genuine powers, including many literary figures such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Ruskin. Lamont, who extensively cites the work of the SPR, writes: “Nevertheless, the problems raised at the time by the most impressive accounts not only posed a serious challenge to accepted scientific knowledge, but also raised wider issues about authority and the nature of evidence” (899). This issue of authority is key to unlocking the seeming paradox of the rationality of Sherlock Holmes and the spiritualism of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and demonstrates a prevailing trend in Victorian culture.
Srdjan Smajić has developed an elegant paradigm for reconciling this paradox. In Ghost-seers, detectives, and spiritualists: Theories of vision in Victorian literature and science, he posits that science was respected as the authority but experienced a “shift in late-Victorian science toward the invisible and, by almost inevitable extension, the supernatural” (136). Advances in the fields of optics, thermodynamics and mathematics, gave credibility to spiritualist claims (137). As an example, he narrates the story of Scottish physicist William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) who approached science as a way to exercise faith in a hypothesis. Lord Kelvin wrote: “We believe [the ether] is a real thing…Surely we have a large and solid ground for our faith in the speculative hypothesis of an elastic luminiferous ether, which constitute [sic], the wave theory of light” (142). Even in scientific circles, professionals were speaking of “faith” and “belief.” Smajić makes a cogent case for scientific theories accomplishing the “remystification or spiritualization of the invisible world” (142).
Though Smajić develops a powerful thesis, this concept cannot adequately explain Doyle’s philosophy as seen in both his Sherlock Holmes writings and his psychical research. First and foremost, Doyle presented Holmes as a materialist, putting his faith in the physical world. In fact, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes summarily discounts any possibility of the supernatural, despite evidence to the contrary (24). Furthermore, Doyle joined the SPR because he believed the society would use science to deepen understanding in the field of psychic phenomena. He did not believe that science was blurring the lines between the natural and supernatural world; instead, he believed that science was a tool to explore the reality of the paranormal. Doyle wrote in 1887 to the Spiritualist journal, Light, about psychic phenomena: “I felt that if human evidence—regarding both the quantity and quality of the witness—can prove anything, it can prove this” (303). He already possessed certainty about psychic phenomena, but expected science to corroborate it in time. This is a significant dynamic in understanding his philosophy of the right use of science in relation to the supranormal: as an elementary tool.
If Doyle considered science a basic tool, could it also serve as a judge of truth? His championship of science in the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre is so strong, that some scholars have suggested that he allied himself with the growing philosophy in which science was the arbiter of reality. Jen Cadwallader, in her study of Victorian psychic phenomena and science, describes the trend of “interest in technology…transforming into a type of religious faith” (12). Though Doyle had a healthy respect for science, he did not give it ultimate authority. Rather, he put his faith in Spiritualism, which he trusted would in time be substantiated by science. A rare newsreel of an interview with Doyle in 1927 records his ardent devotion to his cause and reveals his real purpose in research:
To try and make them understand that this thing is not the foolish thing which is so often represented but that it really is a great philosophy and as, I think, the basis of all religious improvement in the future of the human race. (Interview 6:50-7:07 min.)
With this understanding, the apparent contradiction of Sherlock Holmes’s rational method with Doyle’s belief in the supernatural disappears; Doyle saw science as a rudimentary tool to explore the paranormal, but not its judge. He created Holmes to embody the ideal man who uses logic to solve mysteries, and for Doyle the greatest mystery was the world of psychical phenomena.
Doyle’s philosophy of the proper use of science in regard to psychical research has an impact on the larger field of epistemology, or how we receive knowledge. It raises questions such as the hierarchy of science in relation to ancient wisdom. The foundation of the SPR was a mile marker on the road of Victorian exploration of science and thought, as typified by American psychologist William James, a member of the SPR, who wrote in 1890 of the limitations of science in his article What Psychical Research Has Accomplished:
And this systematic denial on science's part of personality as a condition of events, this rigorous belief that in its own essential and innermost nature our world is a strictly impersonal world, may, conceivably, as the whirligig of time goes round, prove to be the very defect that our descendants will be most surprised at in our own boasted science, the omission that to their eyes will most tend to make it look perspectiveless and short. (303)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle represented one segment of the culture, enthusiastic to use science as a tool, but not ceding it the right to superior knowledge or divinity. Instead, Doyle understood science to be a servant in the noble quest for truth, which would elevate humanity.
Despite the work of the SPR in uncovering growing evidence of fraud among psychic practitioners, Doyle never gave up on psychical research, ultimately writing over a dozen books on the subject. As he wrote in The New Revelation: “Therefore, humble and foolish as these manifestations may seem, they have been the seed of large developments, and are worthy of our respectful, though critical, attention” (3). Here he champions the significance of psychic phenomena while at the same time expecting “critical” investigation. Later in the same treatise in reference to these beliefs he writes: “Having stated it, we should not force it, but leave the rest to higher wisdom than our own” (27). Taking this statement in the context of the methodology of Sherlock Holmes and the work of the SPR, we understand that Doyle considered science an elementary tool for investigating supranatural phenomena, which nevertheless garnered its truth from a higher authority.
Works Cited

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Cadwallader, Jen. "Spirit Photography Victorian Culture of Mourning." Modern Language Studies (2008): 8-31.
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James, William. “What Psychical Research Has Accomplished,” The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979. p 299-303
McCabe, Joseph. Is Spiritualism based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London: Watts & Co., 1920. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.
Lamont, Peter. "Spiritualism and a mid-Victorian crisis of evidence." The Historical Journal 47.04 (2004): 897-920.
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Nelson, Geoffrey K. Spiritualism and Society. Routledge, 2013.
Oppenheim, Janet. The other world: spiritualism and psychical research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Smajić, Srdjan. Ghost-seers, detectives, and spiritualists: Theories of vision in Victorian literature and science. Vol. 71. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
The Society for Psychical Research Website (http://www.SPR.ac.uk/)