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Implications of the Rectangular Curve

James F. Fries and Lawrence Crapo

Why do we age? Why do we die? How can we live longer? How can we preserve our youth? Questions about life, aging, and death are fundamental to human thought, and human beings have speculated about the answers to these questions for centuries. Our own age values the methods of science—the methods of gathering evidence, of observation, of experiment—above the musings of philosophy. Yet, philosophical speculation and scientific theory may interact and enhance each other. The scientific theories of Copernicus and the conception of a sun-centered solar system, of Newton and an orderly universe, of Einstein and the relationship between matter, energy, and spacetime, of Darwin and the evolution of species have influenced our notions of who we are, where we are, how we came to be here, and the meaning of life itself. Similarly, the study of health and aging may contribute a new philosophical perspective to these age-old questions about life and death.

The implications of new scientific discoveries are often not widely appreciated for many years. Scientific knowledge develops by small increments within a relatively cloistered scientific community, whose members are sometimes more interested in the basic ideas than in their social implications….

So it is with the study of human aging. The ancient philosophical questions have largely fallen to those who search for the biological mechanisms that affect our vitality and that cause our death. The study of aging as a separate scientific discipline is relatively new and is not yet the province of any single science. Independent observations have been made in medicine, in psychology, in molecular biology, in sociology, in anthropology, in actuarial science, and in other fields. There are remarkable parallels in the ideas that have emerged from these independent fields of research. It is our intention to review these parallel developments and to present a synthesis of scientific ideas about human aging that will offer insights into the fundamental questions about the nature and meaning of the life process, aging, and death.