ArticleHistory and philosophy of the life sciences2021
Does anybody really know what time it is? : From biological age to biological time.
Article in History and philosophy of the life sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Seven knowledge gaps in modern biogerontology.Biogerontology · 2024Article
- Slowing down decay: biological clocks in personalized medicine.Frontiers in sociology · 2023Article
- Editorial: Timing the Brain: From Basic Sciences to Clinical Implications.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Medawar and Hamilton on the selective forces in the evolution of ageing.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2021Article
- Rethinking ageing: introduction.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2021Article
- What's my age again? Age categories as interactive kinds.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2021Article
- Aging biomarkers and the measurement of health and risk.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
During his celebrated 1922 debate with Bergson, Einstein famously proclaimed: "the time of the philosopher does not exist, there remains only a psychological time that differs from the physicist's." Einstein's dictum, I maintain, has been metabolized by the natural sciences, which typically presuppose, more or less explicitly, the existence of a single, univocal, temporal substratum, ultimately determined by physics. This reductionistic assumption pervades much biological and biomedical practice. The chronological age allotted to individuals is conceived as an objective quantity, allowing one to straightforwardly assign and compare the biological age of organisms. This essay argues that the standard practice of assessing the age and aging of organisms against the backdrop of a physical conception of time is problematic. This becomes especially evident in light of recent discoveries of various levels of senescence underlying the development of individual organisms-a phenomenon known as 'age mosaicism.' The bottom line is that the study of age and aging requires a biological conception of time, as opposed to a physical one. Einstein clearly wasn't wrong about his operationalization of time in relativity theory. Still time may be less monolithic than he surmised.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.