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Bionomics: Vernon Lyman Kellogg and the Defense of Darwinism

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Abstract

Bionomics was a research approach invented by British biological scientists in the late nineteenth century and adopted by the American entomologist and evolutionist Vernon Lyman Kellogg in the early twentieth century. Kellogg hoped to use bionomics, which was the controlled observation and experimentation of organisms within settings that approximated their natural environments, to overcome the percieved weaknesses in the Darwinian natural selection theory. To this end, he established abionomics laboratory at Stanford University, widely published results from his bionomic investigations, and encouraged other biological researchers to adopt bionomics.

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  1. Program in History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota Tate Laboratory of Physics, 116 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, U.S.A.

    Mark A. Largent

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Largent, M.A. Bionomics: Vernon Lyman Kellogg and the Defense of Darwinism. Journal of the History of Biology 32, 465–488 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004732920632

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