Go Get A Watson

I love the Sherlock series with Benedict Cumberbatch. I enjoy many of the films too, most memorably with Robert Downey Jr.

But what sticks out in my mind when I think back on those adaptations is the monologues.

Holmes stands in some dramatically lit room, reeling off brilliant deductions while Watson watches in awe. The Sherlock monologue becomes its own gimmick – the signature of genius: look how much he can deduce while barely pausing for breath.

But when you read the books, you'll realise many of these depictions miss the point.

In Conan Doyle's original stories, Watson is more than a wingman. More than simply a trusted partner, too. I think, in no small part, Watson is a big part of the secret to Sherlock's brilliance. He's the mechanism that forces Holmes to test whether his logic actually holds.

When Holmes explains his chain of reasoning to Watson, what he's often really doing is stress-testing an idea. Watson asks the obvious questions. Why does that detail matter? How do you know that follows from this? Could it not mean something else entirely?

The act of articulation reveals whether the logic is sound or just feels sound. You don't know if your reasoning holds until you try explaining it to someone who'll challenge the gaps.

This is why teaching something is often the best way to learn it. Richard Feynman insisted he only truly understood physics when he had to teach it to Caltech students. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it. The process of simplification forces you to confront the shallowness of some areas you previously took for granted.

Your ability to explain an idea simply separates what you actually know from what you think you know.

Writing works the same way. Montaigne is credited with inventing the essay – "essayer", meaning to try or attempt — because he needed a form for thinking on paper. Not writing to express pre-formed thoughts, but writing to discover what he actually thought.

Returning to Watson — the character achieves something more complex than to simply act as a blank page for Sherlock's scrawls. He reacts. He pushes back. He represents the intelligent audience who won't just accept brilliant-sounding logic without testing it.

Einstein had a close friend called Michele Besso. They worked together at the patent office, and Einstein explicitly credited Besso's role in developing special relativity. Besso, crucially, was the person Einstein could think out loud with. Someone who would challenge interpretations and force Einstein to defend or abandon ideas.

Socrates didn't write anything down. Everything we know about him comes through Plato's dialogues. It's fitting because the Socratic method is entirely about testing ideas through conversation. Ask questions that force articulation. When someone states a belief, ask them to define their terms. Then ask how they know that's true. Then whether that principle holds in other cases. The contradictions reveal themselves through the attempt to explain.

If you don't have a Watson in your life you should look for one. Find a friend who will walk through decisions with you. A colleague who might ask hard questions. A neighbour who won't stand by your poorly articulated ideas.

We need a little friction, and a little help. That's where genius comes from, more often than not. With Einstein and Besso as with Sherlock and Watson. With Socrates and Plato as with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Or maybe you don't, and that's why some of your ideas haven't survived contact with reality. Hard to know if your logic is sound when you're only testing it against yourself.

The lone genius monologuing in a dramatically lit room makes for good television. But robust thinking often requires someone asking, "Yes, but how do you know that?"