58 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
unity of forces may be a philosophical necessity ; it is 
not a fact. 
For the science which treats of organic evolution we 
are in great need of a distinctive term. This need was 
met by Prof. Patrick Geddes, who sug- 
gested the term bionomics. Bionomics 
(Bios, life; véuos, law or custom) is the science which 
treats of the changes in life forms and of the laws and 
forces on which these changes depend. 
Even as thus restricted, organic evolution, or bio- 
nomics, is the greatest of the sciences, including in its sub- 
ject matter not only all natural history, not only pro- 
cesses like cell division and nutrition, not only the laws 
of heredity, variation, natural selection, and mutual 
help, but all matters of human history, and the most 
complicated relations of civics, economics, and ethics. 
In this enormous science no fact can be without a mean- 
ing, and no fact or its underlying forces can be sepa- 
rated from the great forces whose interaction from mo- 
ment to moment writes the great story of life. 
And as the basis to the science of bionomics, as to 
all other science, must be taken the conception that 
nothing is due to chance or whim. Whatever occurs 
comes as the resultant of moving forces. Could we 
know and estimate these forces, we should have, so far 
as our estimate is accurate and our logic perfect, the 
gift of prophecy. Knowing the law, and knowing the 
facts, we should foretell the results. To be able in 
some degree to do this is the art of life. It is the ulti- 
mate end of science, which finds its final purpose in hu- 
man conduct. 
“A law,” according to Darwin, “is the ascertained 
sequence of events.” The necessary sequence of events 
it is, in fact, but man knows nothing of what is neces- 
sary, only of what has been ascertained to occur. Be- 
Bionomics. 
