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Mar 15, 2013

"Learn to feel what you think, and think what you feel." --G. I. Gurdjieff

The Empathy Machine

When you think about Sherlock Holmes, chances are it's not his big, warm heart and his generous nature that come to mind. In fact, you might think of him as a cold fish. Yet in 'Silver Blaze', Arthur Conan Doyle's story of the gallant racehorse who disappeared, Holmes takes an imaginative leap, not only into another human mind, but into the mind of an animal. This perspective-taking, being able to see the world from the point of view of another, is one of the central elements of empathy, and Holmes raised it to the status of an art.