Topological Reflection on Intelligence: Holmes vs House

Topological reflection is an analytical method through which the author analyzes how culture can preserve itself while simultaneously being renewed. It concerns the formation of what is proper to culture. The author draws on V. V. Savchuk's work and further develops several lines of Savchuk's research. The object of the study is the coupling and competition between human and machine intelligence. Its subject is the Topos of Superintelligence. The author examines the image of Sherlock Holmes as a variant of the Superintelligence Topos. The discussion considers the formation of this topos in the era of neo-Romanticism, its ontological foundations, and its connection to the principle of Zadigism. The discussion then turns to the series “Sherlock” and “Dr. House” and demonstrates that the Topos of Superintelligence has changed because, in the contemporary context, machine intelligence no longer provides a basis for Romantic productivity. In other forms of the detective genre in the early twentieth century, an image of reality emerged that did not resonate with the culture of its time but gained attention in the early twenty-first century. This image becomes the ontological basis for the transformation of the Topos of Superintelligence. The author concludes that the unconscious of culture is shifting the strategy for developing intelligence toward specifically human competencies.