One of the defining features of the field of aging research is the lack of consensus at the detail level regarding what exactly aging is, why it happens, how it happens, how best to measure it, and how best to treat aging as a medical condition. Thus a fair amount of the scientific debate in the field is either implicitly or explicitly arguing over the definition of the field in some way, not just reporting data or proposing programs. The past three decades have been characterized by the development of overarching taxonomies of the manifestations and mechanisms of aging that attempt to provide answers to pressing questions for scientists such as "what should we study in order to improve our understanding of aging" and "how should we proceed towards the development of therapies for aging".
Initially the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) emerged from scientific outsiders as both a proposed description of root causes of aging and a call to action to do something about these causes from a humanitarian perspective. Later, the Hallmarks of Aging and Pillars of Aging emerged from scientific insiders, descriptions of manifestations of aging with no attached ethical imperative, the Hallmarks in particular coming to dominate discussions of the taxonomy of mechanisms of aging. The Hallmarks, for better or worse, are now treated much like a checklist for planning out future research aimed at understanding or treating aging. How these shifts within a field occur, how a field of scientific endeavor describes itself, is of course a well studied topic in and of itself. Thus one can find commentary such as today's open access paper on the transformation of the aging research field in recent decades.
The Hallmarks of Aging: Paradigms and Scientific Progress
Aging matters. Many lives are at stake. In this work, we have examined in detail what is probably the most influential conceptual framework in contemporary geroscience, analyzing the Hallmarks through philosophical tools that had also already been partially invoked in the literature of the field itself.
In Kuhnian terms, the dominant model in contemporary geroscience understands aging as the accumulation of molecular and cellular damage, and the Hallmarks represent its most characteristic exemplar: the canonical structure through which normal science operates, defining what counts as valid evidence, what types of intervention are considered pertinent, and what problems are considered solvable. From a Lakatosian perspective, this same process can be interpreted as the consolidation of a theoretical core based on the same ontology, surrounded by a protective belt of alternative models and classifications - such as the Strategies for Negligible Senescence, SENS - in the debate, and which allow the empirical horizon to be expanded without questioning their fundamental assumptions.
From Laudan's approach, this process can be understood as a reorganization of the problem-space of the field, where the consolidation of the framework has not eliminated the open empirical or conceptual problems, but has restructured them within a more coherent methodological environment. From Kitcher's view, its success can be explained in more contextual than purely theoretical terms, as a result of its organizational capacity and its diffusion as a common reference. Finally, following Galison's ideas, the Hallmarks can be understood as a pragmatic device that harmonizes methods, data, and scientific communities, functioning as a stabilized trading zone in which collaboration can continue even in the absence of full theoretical convergence.
This reading also connects with a concern that is increasingly visible in the recent debate: the problem of consensus in the biology of aging. Faced with the persistence of disagreements on fundamental questions, our analysis suggests that the role of the Hallmarks in this context may have been greater than has usually been recognized. Rather than resolving the disagreement, they have contributed to structuring the field by allowing its practical coordination despite the absence of theoretical consensus, and we believe we have offered sufficient reasons to justify this interpretation. This structuring function becomes especially clear when one considers the recent catalogue of 100 open questions in research in the field. What is significant is not only the magnitude of the issues identified, but the fact that many of them are formulated within the conceptual space that the Hallmarks have helped to stabilize. Returning to Laudan, this can be interpreted as evidence of how a framework contributes to defining which problems are considered scientifically relevant.
View the full article at FightAging
