Читать книгу General system theory of aging. Special role of the immune system - V. I. Dontsov - Страница 10

The most important approach to the analysis in a systemic examination is to take into account the hierarchy of the structures of real complex systems. At the same time, system analysis requires consideration of principles characteristic of each hierarchical level.

Such a hierarchy of consideration in system analysis reflects not the material structure of the object that morphological sciences study, but a hierarchy of essential principles reflecting the laws of functioning and communication within and between the structural levels of the object being considered, which acts as a complex hierarchical dynamic system.

The following table gives an idea of the hierarchy of aging in terms of a systematic approach (Table 1).

Table 1. The hierarchy of consideration of aging in terms of a systematic approach

Three hierarchical levels of aging description are fundamentally ideal and are available only for theoretical analysis.

The last level is structural and its study is possible only when it is filled with biological content. With this consideration, it can be seen that the primary cause, as a principle, is manifested by several of the most common patterns – the types of aging inherent in all living systems. These types, in turn, form a number of interrelated groups of symptoms – aging syndromes, which already include specific manifestations of aging at the level of specific mechanisms that implement aging depending on specific conditions.

The systematic consideration of aging is also manifested in the fact that in each specific manifestation, the mechanism of aging, you can see all four levels mentioned above: a reflection of the ideal cause in specific conditions; relation to a greater extent to a certain type of aging; regular relationship at the level of mechanisms with other symptoms (syndromes); and, finally, the actual concrete actual manifestation of aging for the phenomenon under study in a specific case for a specific structure. Naturally, the more specific and narrow the phenomenon we study, the more specific, but more narrowly, the cause of aging manifests itself.

For the whole organism, aging as a whole can be sufficiently fully characterized only with the use of all four hierarchical levels of its presentation. An important and traditional is the structural consideration of the body or its individual elements.

Here again, the system approach allows revealing the moments obscured by usual consideration.

The dynamic view of the phenomenon under consideration indicates that living systems exist only as a stream, where continuity is preserved, but not always the entire real material structure. Processes in a living system occur at different time levels. So, at the metabolic level, these are (micro) seconds of biochemical reactions during which specific molecules exist; for cells, these are hours and days during which they are divided (cell cycle); for the whole organism, these are years, decades and even centuries.

Each level can have representation at a higher level with some of its structural elements (non-updated genes – at the cell level, non-dividing cells – at the suborgan level, etc.), then these lower-level elements become important for higher-level aging.

Each level is updated at the expense of a higher level, which reduces the absolute significance of the lowest level for aging higher (for example, cell growth and division sharply reduce the importance of aging or damage at the molecular level).

Each level is qualitatively different in structure and principles of organization and functioning.

All levels constitute a single whole, its change, in the final analysis, is only important as the aging of the organism is the aging of the whole.

Thus, consideration of the system analysis requirements for the aging phenomenon makes it possible to see the fundamentally important points of the problem analysis.

The most important is the ability to solve a number of central problems in gerontology in general, which allows to determine the common cause of aging systems and biological systems in particular, the main mechanisms for the manifestation of the common cause of aging, as well as the ways of manifestation of these common mechanisms of aging.

It is possible to identify the main properties of the biological system, which lead directly to its aging, to evaluate ways of influencing the aging of the organism and individual organs, systems, tissues and cells, as well as to clearly understand the prospects for such effects, their points of application and possible efficiency, as well as the fundamental The limited nature of these or other effects, the limits of their application and the ability to influence the aging of the whole organism.

The use of systems analysis puts gerontology as a science of aging on a clear methodological basis, leads it away from many circulating myths that are now replacing the general picture of aging and clear scientific views on it in gerontology.

System analysis in the first place allows you to move from the infinite consideration of particular views and mechanisms of aging to the consideration of the laws and principles that act during the aging of living systems, which just determines both the fundamentally possible main mechanisms of aging and the possible effects on it as well as the ultimate perspectives of such opportunities.

Thus, the use of the provisions of system analysis allows us to understand much in the problem of aging already at the level of abstract analysis.