Sherlock Holmes primarily relies on abduction: inferring an explanation for observed details. "From a drop of water", he writes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other". In "A Scandal in Bohemia", Holmes infers that Watson had got wet lately and had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl". When Watson asks how Holmes knows this, the detective answers: In the first Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet", Dr. Watson compares Holmes to C. Auguste Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe's fictional detective, who employed a similar methodology. Alluding to
Louis Ellies Dupin the opening part of his second volume of "Remarques". Petit-Didier's observations often seem inspired by prejudices of his time. Thus Dupin had placed St. Macarius the Egyptian in the 4th century, to which indeed he rightly belongs. Having discovered Semipelagianism in this author's works, Petit-Didier concluded that Macarius should come after Pelagius and St. Augustine (II, 198). In reality similar ideas had been professed by many before St. Augustine's time. A more formidable enemy appeared in Bossuet, who, during a public thesis at the Collège de Navarre in 1692, condemned Dupin's audacity. Dupin answered him and Bossuet appealed to the