Of Dickens and Darwin

It's rare for scientists and literary authors to cross paths. A scientist often works within the hermetic enclaves of a laboratory, and authors -- well, many never set foot in a laboratory their entire lives. As a result, they generally don't talk to each other. However, I argue that they do talk to each other, albeit indirectly -- scientists are indeed influenced by literary and humanistic discourse, and scientific principles are reflected in literary works. For example, critic I. A. Richards argued that positivism, a philosophy of science that maintains that knowledge is only arrived at through direct observation, should serve as an example for literary theory. George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens, authors who wrote during the Victorian era, appropriated many of the scientific arguments of their day into their works. Eliot and Hardy, in fact, showed interest and fascination with accounts of scientific invention and discovery,...