THE SCIENCE OF LIFE 



physiology, is for the most part the physiology of work, 

 or ergology; it investigates the functions of the living 

 organism, and has to reduce them as closely as possible 

 to physical and chemical laws. Vegetable ergology deals 

 with what are called the vegetative functions, nutrition 

 and reproduction ; animal ergology studies the animal 

 activities of movement and sensation. Psychology is 

 directly connected with the latter. But the study of the 

 relations of the organism to its environment, organic and 

 inorganic, also belongs to physiology in the wider sense; 

 we call this part of it perilogy, or the physiology of 

 relations. To this belong chorology, or the science of 

 distribution (also called biological geography, as it 

 deals with geographical and topographical distribution), 

 and oecology or bionomy (also recently called ethol- 

 ogy), the science of the domestic side of organic life, of 

 the life-needs of organisms and their relations to other 

 organisms with which they live (biocenosis, symbiosis, 

 parasitism) . 



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