Ian Daniel Stewart

This older article in Aeon looks at the science of empathy with Sherlock Holmes as a guide.

The ability to see the world from another set of eyes, to experience things vicariously, at multiple levels, is training ground for such feats of imagination and reason that allow a Holmes to solve almost any crime, an Einstein to imagine a reality unlike any that we’ve experienced before (in keeping with laws unlike any we’ve come up with before), and a Picasso to make art that differs from any prior conception of what art can be.

To empathize well can be powerful stuff.