LITERARY GENRES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN BIOLOGY - SEMANTIC SHIFTS AND SCIENTIFIC CHANGE

Experimental papers ('primary literature') in biology are generally co nsidered as the key scientific texts that allow the construction of kn owledge claims, whereas it is held that review papers ('secondary lite rature') play a role in 'synthesizing' the knowledge claims made in ex perimental papers, rather than in making new claims. This paper analyz es the literary strategy used by a biologist in order to make a new kn owledge claim. As a worker in the field of intermediary metabolism, he succeeded in making an unexpected observation meaningful to endocrino logists by using their language, instead of his own disciplinary langu age. More generally the paper argues that review papers afford the bes t opportunity for constructing new knowledge claims, because they do n ot have to conform to a routinely standardized structure, and allow a wider semantic repertoire than do experimental reports.