Cerebroanalysis

Cerebroanalysis is presented as a way to infer a person’s psychological tendencies, but the investigation of Dr. Sarton’s murder shows the limits of treating such an inference as a verdict. The analysis of Commissioner Enderby first seems to rule out his guilt; only when Baley supplies physical evidence does R. Daneel revise his judgment. At the close, the same method supports a different conclusion: Enderby is sincere in promising to help. Its significance lies in that contrast between what psychological assessment can suggest and what it cannot, by itself, prove about a particular act.

Role in the Investigation

R. Daneel invokes Enderby’s cerebroanalysis while defending him from Baley’s accusation. He says Enderby’s psychological properties make deliberate murder impossible, and tentatively identifies cowardice, conscience, or compassion as possible descriptions of the trait behind that assessment. The conclusion sounds decisive, but it is an interpretation of Enderby’s disposition rather than an account of how Dr. Sarton was killed.

The apparent certainty clashes with the circumstantial case Baley lays out. He proposes that Enderby arranged for a robot to carry a blaster across the open country, entered Spacetown through the Personal and surrendered his own weapon, then received the weapon used to kill Dr. Sarton. In Baley’s reconstruction, R. Sammy brought the weapon back to New York City, and Enderby later destroyed the robot whose knowledge had become dangerous. R. Daneel answers that his reading of Enderby’s cerebroanalysis leaves deliberate murder impossible. The two accounts place psychological inference and material reconstruction in direct conflict.

A Judgment Reconsidered

Physical evidence changes the balance. Baley identifies pieces of concave lenses and proposes comparing their optical properties with Enderby’s glasses. He then prevents Enderby from smashing the spectacles and hands them to R. Daneel as evidence that Enderby had been at the dome earlier than believed. R. Daneel says the cerebroanalysis had thrown him completely off the scent and congratulates Baley. In the scene, analysis has not vanished as evidence; rather, it has proved insufficient to override the clue that connects Enderby to the dome.

Enderby then admits that the killing was a mistake and that he never meant to kill Dr. Sarton. That admission distinguishes his intention from the result without erasing his responsibility. The exchange also exposes the danger in turning a psychological profile into an absolute guarantee: even a reading that appears to exclude deliberate murder cannot, on its own, explain the circumstances or consequences of a death.

Sincerity and the Limits of Inference

After Baley urges Enderby to support space colonization and to end the R. Sammy matter by treating it as an accident, R. Daneel says there is no need to say more: Enderby is sincere and will help, as his cerebroanalysis makes obvious. Here the method serves a narrower purpose than it did in the murder accusation. It supports an assessment of whether Enderby’s promise is genuine, not a reconstruction of what happened at the dome.

The closing use therefore neither discards cerebroanalysis nor restores it as infallible. R. Daneel’s first judgment misdirects the investigation; the comparison of the lens fragments and glasses corrects it. Later, cerebroanalysis contributes to a practical judgment about Enderby’s willingness to cooperate. The contrast makes the method’s evidentiary boundary clear: it can inform an assessment of psychological tendency or sincerity, but the investigation still needs concrete evidence to establish actions and their consequences.