Bashing the Furniture in my Brain Attic

I was struggling to find something to say about brains today, so on a whim I googled “Sherlock’s Brain.” I got this: Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova – digested read. I skimmed it, decided I liked the phrase “obliquity of the ecliptic,” then got distracted by something.

I went back to read the whole thing later, and found myself a bit put off by the writer’s tone. Who does she think she is, this Konnikova?

So I looked for a different link from my original Google search. I clicked on “Sherlock Holmes and the infamous brain attic - Boing Boing” and got an article written by Maria Konnikova.

Grrrr.

But I read it anyway. And the tone was very different. And informative! Sherlock, via Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, writing in the late nineteenth century, thought of the human brain as an attic, to be filled with furniture as appropriate, to be cluttered up or only furnished with useful pieces. Konnikova points out that Doyle’s analogy is a good one, given the way our brains interpret, process, store, and retrieve experiences. Memory is indeed like an attic. So I felt better for having read this second piece.

But not a single use of the phrase “obliquity of the ecliptic.” So what I read before at the Guardian?

I went back and realized my error. The Guardian piece was written by John Crace. It’s a (satirical) digest of Maria Konnikova’s book. The article on Boing Boing IS by Konnikova, and is a promotion of her book.

So what I had initially read was a fake digest, or a faux facsimile, or a sham of a simulacrum. And what I read second was an introductory promotion, or an appetizing distillation, or a tantalizing opportunity for further investigation.

In other words, as I was reading these articles, storing furniture in my attack, I was trying to stack a baby grand onto a spindly ottoman. With enough balance, I might have achieved it—but when it came time to recall what I’d read, who knows what would have crashed through.

Probably something about fairies. Apparently, Doyle and or Kannikova believed in them at one point. I’m not sure what that has to do with anyone of this, but unlike Sherlock, my own attic is already pretty crammed as it is.