Ecological Metaphors as Scientific Boundary Work: Innovation and Authority in Interwar Sociology and Biology

Abstract

The development of human ecology during the interwar period was a significant scientific innovation enabled by the sociological use of biological concepts as tropes for social organization. This examination of the connections between biology and sociology illuminates a process whereby new scientific knowledge is generated, new scientific communities are formed, and individuals become scientists. These relationships were arranged around the negotiable boundaries between the social and the natural in 20th-century science. This process is examined through an analysis of scientific texts, metaphor transaction in science, and mentoring practices that reveal the transmission and bounding of knowledge and authority.