THE NEW PARADIGM
What is a Paradigm?
Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), introduced the concept of paradigm into the philosophy of science. Paradigms are what “everyone knows” to be true about a particular field of science. The paradigm creates a conceptual framework that determines how the world is seen and how observations are interpreted. As a result, some phenomena are highlighted while others are ignored. But most people, including scientists and academicians, are not even aware of the perceptual limitations imposed by a paradigm.
A new paradigm does not change our observations. But it does change how we interpret out observations. At one time the prevailing astronomical paradigm was that the earth was the stationary center of the universe and the apparent motion of the sun was caused by the sun revolving around the earth. We still observe that the sun “rises” in the east and sets in the west, but because of a paradigm shift we now are aware that the sun’s apparent motion is caused by the rotation of the earth.
The New Gestalt
According to Kuhn, a paradigm shift that results in a scientific revolution is akin to a change in vision; the scientist “must learn to see a new gestalt.” Conventional aging theorists have always regarded complex metazoans as machines. If left to their own devices, they should thrive indefinitely, subject only to the need to occasionally replace a worn out or damaged component. This fundamental preconception is inconsistent with reality. In reality, the default state of all matter is to be dead. Thus, every biological component that comprises the human organism is fighting a losing battle against its inevitable demise. Most of the conceptual framework that comprises the current aging paradigm is based on the faulty foundational premise that the default state of all organisms should be perpetual life. As a result, substantially all of the preconceptions that are embodied in that framework are also flawed.
The reality is that the human organism (like all other complex organisms) is comprised of trillions of components, each of which has a very limited lifespan, typically measured in days or weeks. Identifying, eliminating and replacing the billions of components that are damaged each and every day is an incredibly complex process. The only reason that a complex metazoan is capable of surviving for more than a few days is that all complex organisms are endowed with remarkably sophisticated maintenance systems.
Intrinsic Damage
The human organism is comprised of organs, which are made up of tissues, which are comprised of cells, which are made up of molecules. Damage or a flaw in any component at any level of biological organization can adversely affect higher levels. A flaw at the molecular level can impact an organelle in a cell that then prevents the cell from functioning properly; improperly functioning cells can affect tissues, organs, organ systems, and the entire organism. Thus, at every level of biological organization, there are maintenance processes that remove defective or damaged components and replace them with healthy new components.
Each day, an adult human loses 50 to 70 billion cells. Defective or damaged cells become senescent (which means they can’t undergo mitosis) and transmit distress signals. If every maintenance process worked perfectly, all of the senescent cells would be removed and replaced by healthy new cells. However, no biological process works perfectly. Over time, just because of the sheer numbers of cells involved, and the fact that each cell is made up of tens of millions of subcomponents, deficient and defective replacement of cells results in the accumulation of senescent cells and other physiological damage. The New Paradigm refers to the damage that results from the inevitable loss of biological components as intrinsic damage. A critical concept is that intrinsic damage is an inexorable force, and is much more robust than generally believed. But intrinsic damage accumulates to the point where it adversely affects functionality only when there is some interference with the proper functioning of the maintenance system. The essay entitled “Intrinsic Damage and the Human Maintenance System” discusses intrinsic damage in much greater detail.
The Human Maintenance System
Although intrinsic damage is inexorable, biological aging/FDS is not. A critical evolutionary advantage of a multicellular organism is that the inevitable death of individual components does not necessarily result in any harm to the organism. Multicellular organisms generate new cells to replace the cells that die. However, as noted above, imperfect replacement of components inevitably results in intrinsic damage. If that intrinsic damage accumulates, it will result in progressive dysfunctionality.
The risk of accumulation of intrinsic damage has been an ever present challenge for every complex organism that has ever existed. It can be likened to an immutable force like gravity. Evolution has been able to work on this problem for hundreds of millions of years. The damage that accumulates at the tissue level can be easily detected in the organs of a typical 25-year old human. Evolutionary principles predict that natural selection would have endowed humans with a mechanism whereby at least some of that damage (the damage that results in the impairment of critical bodily functions) would be repaired. All humans have robust healing processes, and a repair mechanism would be no more complex than, and would in fact be quite similar to, the healing process. So the absence of a physiological mechanism that prevents the accumulation of intrinsic damage would be akin to evolution having designed an airplane without taking gravity into account.
It is long past time for the scientific establishment to recognize that evolution did endow us with such a repair mechanism. A cursory review of the literature reveals an enormous amount of information about the human maintenance system. Apparently the only reason that the maintenance system has not yet been acknowledged to be a critical biological system is that, under the current aging paradigm, the human maintenance system is assumed to be ineffectual, or even nonexistent.
The essay entitled “Intrinsic Damage and the Human Maintenance System” discusses the human maintenance system in much greater detail, providing examples of various maintenance processes. The essay also uses examples of environmental factors disrupting particular maintenance processes to illustrate that intrinsic damage is a far more inexorable and powerful force than it has been conventionally assumed to be, and thus that the proper functioning of maintenance system is absolutely critical to the survival of all complex metazoans.
Scientific Revolution
Thomas Kuhn’s book is entitled “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” because Kuhn believed that significant advances in science occur as the result of paradigm shifts. The paradigm shift called for by the New Paradigm is deceptively simple – acknowledgement of the prevalence of intrinsic damage and the necessity for the countervailing maintenance processes. But that acknowledgement would result in a paradigm shift that would revolutionize the life sciences. The essay entitled “Scientific Revolution” provides just a sprinkling of the hypotheses that explain hitherto unexplainable, common aging-related phenomena, that would naturally flow from applying the principles of natural selection to the conceptual framework established by the New Paradigm.
Thomas Kuhn’s book is entitled “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” because Kuhn believed that significant advances in science occur as the result of paradigm shifts. The paradigm shift called for by the New Paradigm is deceptively simple – acknowledgement of the prevalence of intrinsic damage and the necessity for the countervailing maintenance processes. But that acknowledgement would result in a paradigm shift that would revitalize the life sciences. The essay entitled “Scientific Revolution” provides examples of a number of proposed scientific theories that explain common aging-related phenomena, that naturally flow from applying the principles of natural selection to the conceptual foundation established by the New Paradigm.
Degenerative Disorders
One of the hypotheses (a hypothesis is a proposed theory that has not yet been generally accepted by the scientific community) that flows from the New Paradigm creates a conceptual framework for all degenerative disorders. Degenerative disorders are characterized by the progressive deterioration of the function and structure of an organ or system. If uncorrected, deteriorating functionality ultimately manifests itself as a clinical problem. The basic premise of this hypothesis is that all degenerative disorders are caused by some environmental agent interfering with the effective functioning of the human maintenance system. Disruption of the maintenance system allows for the accumulation of intrinsic damage that ultimately compromises functionality. No pathogen or other extrinsic agent inflicts that damage. Instead, the deterioration is the result of the maintenance system failing to remove and replace biological components that are being constantly deteriorating as a result of intrinsic damage. These concepts are discussed in greater detail in the essay entitled “Degenerative Disorders.”
A related hypothesis is that FDS – the progressive dysfunctionality that is experienced by a typical human with advancing chronological age (commonly referred to as “biological aging”) – is itself a degenerative disorder. This hypothesis further posits that the age-associated degenerative diseases (e.g., cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and most forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease) are not separate diseases, but are simply manifestations or symptoms of the FDS disorder. Since all degenerative disorders are the result of an environmental factor disrupting the effective functioning of the human maintenance system, the same must be true of FDS as well.
Functional Decline Syndrome
The New Paradigm does not suggest that aging itself can be prevented or reversed. Instead it posits that the progressive declines in functionality that are associated with increasing chronological age are the result of a degenerative disorder rather than a natural aging process. To clarify the critical distinction between the loss of function and chronological aging, the New Paradigm uses the term Functional Decline Syndrome (“FDS”) to describe the progressive loss of functionality.
FDS is a degenerative disorder. Like other disorders, FDS has a number of different symptoms. Substantially all of the “infirmities of aging,” including the age-associated degenerative diseases, are symptoms of FDS.
Because FDS has historically afflicted every human who has lived to a sufficient age, the loss of function that is caused by FDS has been inextricably linked to an assumed aging process that is designed to result in death. The universal preconception is that over time, all humans are genetically programmed to progressively lose function, suffer from age-associated degenerative diseases and die. That pervasive belief is incorrect. There is no inextricable linkage between FDS and dying. Like all degenerative disorders, if the cause of the disorder is not corrected, the symptoms will worsen over time until the subject dies. That is the only association between FDS and dying.
The symptoms of FDS encompass much more than the recognized age-associated diseases discussed below. Other symptoms of FDS include most, but not all, cases of muscle loss or declines in effectiveness of the skeletal muscle system, decline in effectiveness of immune system, erectile dysfunction, memory and other cognitive loss that is not recognized as dementia, etc.
The most intransigent problem confronting the medical establishment is age-associated degenerative diseases. Recognized age-associated degenerative diseases that are symptoms of FDS are most, but not all, cases of dementia, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, arthritis and kidney disease. The age-associated degenerative diseases typically result from decades of slowly accumulating damage. FDS causes the progressive physiological deterioration of all organs and systems in the body. At some point, an organ or system that is responsible for a critical biological process fails, and that failure is recognized as one of the age-associated degenerative diseases.
Age-associated degenerative diseases are chronic because science has failed to pinpoint what causes the damage to accumulate. In the absence of a theory that identifies the causal mechanism, the approach to such diseases is much like the approach to infectious diseases prior to the acceptance of the Germ Theory. Identify risk factors based on statistical correlations and try to control those factors. But the identified risk factors (e.g., smoking, stress, obesity, etc.) typically act on the damage side of the equation by accelerating the rate at which damage is inflicted. Even if all such factors are controlled, in the typical human, intrinsic damage slowly accumulates over time, and ultimately some organ or system fails, resulting in a degenerative disease. Lacking the knowledge of why the damage accumulates, with rare exceptions, the medical establishment can treat only the symptoms rather than the underlying cause of the disease.
FDS and the age-associated degenerative diseases are discussed in greater detail in the essay entitled “Functional Decline Syndrome.”
This essay is a summary of the concepts discussed in the four essays that comprise this section of the website. Set forth below are links that will take you to each of the more detailed essays.