Who can put into words the Machiavellian use of the unexpected, insights into human foibles, our failings and oversights, the foolishness of overconfidence better than Poe? Socrates said the only thing I know – is that I know nothing. And Poe demonstrates that we know nothing. The effective investigator remains detached from ideology because every situation is different.
Poe could always predict the ending of a Sherlock Holmes story because deductive logic is predictable – unlike the real world. Real cases are not solved by deductive logic. This did not stop Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead from having a go at promoting deductive logic as the foundation for all of mathematics in Principia Mathematica 60 years after Poe had passed away.
In The Purloined Letter, Poe’s character of Dupin says that, if the Minister were only a mathematician, the police would have solved this case on their own. A mathematician thinks in formal, logical terms, and operates off a set of assumptions. However, this method does not work in the real world. Dupin knows that the target is also a poet. So his mind works is not confined by underlying formal assumptions. The thorough methods of the Parisian police would suffice to catch out a mathematician. A poet, on the other hand, thinks differently. Moreover, the letter had to be readily accessible and so must be where he lived.
He knew that the police would break into his apartment for a thorough search. Therefore, Dupin concluded that the letter had to be ‘hidden in plain sight’.
How much of the war against humanity today is hidden in plain view? Poe helps us calibrate our thinking to understand the methods of today’s enemies of civilization. Poe himself as part of the American revolutionary republican movement had his own training on the ground, and his works act as a guide for anyone interested in how today's oligarchy operates.
The world always has space for a new edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s works. A new edition from Austi Classics is available at Amazon here.
Figure 1: Edgar Allan Poe
Poe could always predict the ending of a Sherlock Holmes story because deductive logic is predictable – unlike the real world. Real cases are not solved by deductive logic. This did not stop Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead from having a go at promoting deductive logic as the foundation for all of mathematics in Principia Mathematica 60 years after Poe had passed away.
In The Purloined Letter, Poe’s character of Dupin says that, if the Minister were only a mathematician, the police would have solved this case on their own. A mathematician thinks in formal, logical terms, and operates off a set of assumptions. However, this method does not work in the real world. Dupin knows that the target is also a poet. So his mind works is not confined by underlying formal assumptions. The thorough methods of the Parisian police would suffice to catch out a mathematician. A poet, on the other hand, thinks differently. Moreover, the letter had to be readily accessible and so must be where he lived.
He knew that the police would break into his apartment for a thorough search. Therefore, Dupin concluded that the letter had to be ‘hidden in plain sight’.
Figure 2: Dupin purloins from Minister D the letter that Minister D had purloined, in The Purloined Letter. The illustration accompanied an essay by Jules Verne ‘Edgar Allan Poe and his works’.
The world always has space for a new edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s works. A new edition from Austi Classics is available at Amazon here.
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