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Edward A. Ross, a key figure in the early history of American sociology, developed a conceptualization of natural and social changes of the material environment that is virtually forgotten today. In this paper, these topics are discussed and located vis-à-vis Ross's intellectual contemporaries and their general take on the nature/society relationship. It is argued that ecological and sociological ideas in the early twentieth century influenced one another and, in the case of Ross, produced a perspective of social change that tried to include the dynamics of nature. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between two seminal figures in American sociology, in terms of its contribution to the movement to establish the science within the academic world. Using archival data, the analysis shows how Edward A. Ross and Pitirim A. Sorokin became acquainted and subsequently collaborated to expand the intellectual horizons and institutional base of sociology. Their collaboration is understood as intergenerational solidarity, which the paper argues is fundamental to an understanding of both the past and the future of organized sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents letters between sociologists Lester F. Ward and Edward A. Ross. It concludes the collection of letters that were published in previous issues of the journal "American Sociological Review." The author states that letters of Ross are part of Ward's manuscripts bequeathed by Ward to Ross, who in turn gave them to the Library of Brown University where Ward taught from 1906 to 1913. The editor of the journal makes a grateful acknowledgement in the article to Social Science Research Council for a grant-in-aid to do research on those manuscripts at Brown University, to the staff of the Library of the University for its cordial co-operation and to Ross for making available Ward's letters to the author. In a letter from Ward to Ross, which was send from Washington D.C. on March 18, 1906, Ward wrote that he has some curiosity to Ross' reviews of the book "General Sociology," by Albion W. Small. Ward refrained from giving his opinion on it as he had read only two-thirds of those reviews.