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Science of Aging: From Idol Theories To Common Theories

Science of Aging: From Idol Theories To Common Theories, Philosophy of Medicine(The Journal of the Korean association for philosophy of medicine) Nr.11(2011), 57-79, in Korean


This paper presents a critical argument against rosy expectations of the ageing on the basis of ideal theories. Dream of Eternal Youth lasted as the greatest desire of human being up to now from ancient times. Modern Science is trying to find out a silver-bullet for a longevity and healthy ageing. Biological medicine therefore is offering so many advanced theories of ageing in order to accomplish the physiological goal. I called them “idol theories” in a view that they can get into commercial tools unfortunately. Some theories of ageing might turn out to be true someday. But surely many of them that claim to solve the problem of ageing ended up just ad-hoc componential theories. In my article I will show that the so called “idol theory” could not be a one-to-one correspondent theory between theory and symptom/gene on ageing. The goal of this article is to search for the possible correlations among so-called idol theories and come up with a new insight on ageing both scientifically and philosophically. A lot of ultrafashionable idol theories can be necessary but not sufficient conditions for the scientific explanation of ageing. Even if we had a bunch of sufficient theories on ageing, we should also have another theory of common sense that our real life depend upon and is derived from, I argue philosophically that the common sense theory is more important than the idol theories in order to better our life.
 


ageing, tamed species and field species, idol theories and common theories, telomere, Kirkwood



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DATE   20110630
PUBLISHED BY   The Journal of the Korean association for philosophy of medicine in Korea"
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