ABSTRACT
When two scholarly endeavors are drawn together from different directions into a single interdisciplinary study, the enterprise need not shipwreck. Although Hardy commemorated the sinking of the Titanic by conceiving of “convergence” as the coincidental collision of opposing forces – Nature/Culture, Fire/Ice, Male/Female, Human Vainglory/Immanent Will – there are other thematic associations available for other incidents of convergence. Although by no means a typical path into Hardy scholarship – and plenty accidental in many respects – my experience with the interrelations of literature and the history of science has enabled me to appreciate, and in some ways even to reenact, aspects of Hardy’s quest to understand the natural world and human life within it.
