ECOLOGICAL METAPHORS AS SCIENTIFIC BOUNDARY WORK - INNOVATION AND AUTHORITY IN INTERWAR SOCIOLOGY AND BIOLOGY

The development of human ecology during the interwar period was a sign ificant scientific innovation enabled by the sociological use of biolo gical concepts as tropes for social organization. This examination of the connections between biology and sociology illuminates a process wh ereby new scientific knowledge is generated, new scientific communitie s are formed, and individuals become scientists. These relationships w ere arranged around the negotiable boundaries between the social and t he natural in 20th-century science. This process is examined through a n analysis of scientific texts, metaphor transaction in science, and m entoring practices that reveal the transmission and bounding of knowle dge and authority.