Who does this sound like?
"I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my xxxxxxx would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But
he has no ambition and no energy. He would not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and
would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury."
You might think that this was Satoshi talking about Oreki. But you'd be wrong. It was the world's most renowned detective,
Sherlock Holmes, talking about his older brother,
Mycroft Holmes.
Satoshi is very much like Sherlock Holmes without the deductive reasoning capabilities. Energetic, very observant, able to categorize, prioritize and store data. He is very skilled at what he does. To say that
anyone could do what he does is like saying that
anyone could be a Sherlock Holmes (without the deductive reasoning capabilities).
Oreki is obviously more like Mycroft Holmes (less a couple hundred pounds; Mycroft was "absolutely corpulent"). Immensely capable of taking data, analyzing it, and coming up with a plausible hypothesis, yet also completely useless when it comes to gathering that data on his own.
I wouldn't be surprised if the author was actually thinking of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes as the basis for the particular character traits of Satoshi and Oreki.