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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2025
The explosive increase in life expectancy over the 20th century led to the formulation of multiple gerontological theories. Of these, it is the evolutionary theories of senescence that enjoy the greatest theoretical and empirical support today. It is striking that these models put reproduction at the center of their postulates, an emphasis shared with the Aristotelian and Thomistic doctrines of the living being; this meeting point inspires our model. In particular, we hypothesize that the corporeal living being, precisely because of its mortality, can only fulfill the universal vocation to similitudo Dei through the generation of another living being of the same species. Once this purpose is fulfilled, its biological organization – understood here as a minimal entitative disposition that allows the actualization of matter by substantial form – decays and is exposed to random damage, as predicted by evolutionary models. This gradual decline is what is known as senescence. Such an approach opens up the possibility of addressing aging positively, with an emphasis on organizational prolongation resulting in a healthier old age. At the same time, such a perspective could illuminate our current understanding of biological organization and the pathologies that affect it.
1 Cf. Roger B. McDonald, Biology of Aging (Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis, 2019), pp. 9–12.
2 Cf. Luigi Fontana, ‘Modulating Human Aging and Age-Associated Diseases’, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 10 (2009), 1133–38.
3 Cf. Apostolos Karavidas, et al., ‘Aging and the cardiovascular system’, The Hellenic Journal of Cardiology, 5(51) (2010), pp. 421–27; David E. Bloom, et al., ‘Global population aging: Facts, challenges, solutions & perspectives’, Daedalus, 144 (2) (2015), 80–92.
4 Cf. McDonald, Biology of Aging, p. 2.
5 Cf. Zhores A. Medvedev, ‘An attempt at a rational classification of theories of ageing’, Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 65 (3) (1990), 375–98.
6 Cf. Brian T. Weinert, Paola S. Timiras, ‘Invited review: Theories of aging’, Journal of applied physiology, 95 (4) (2003), 1706–16.
7 Cf. McDonald, Biology of Aging, pp. 93–132.
8 See n. 60. There is a growing presence of evolutionary and integrative approaches in the literature. Of course, one could argue whether these new perspectives have completely shaken off mechanistic prejudices, but at least one can see in them an attempt to overcome the limitations inherent in the crudest versions of mechanism. See, for example, Kimberly A. Hughes, Rose M. Reynolds, ‘Evolutionary and Mechanistic Theories of Aging’, Annual Review of Entomology, 50 (2005), 421–45; Elisa Cevenini, et al., ‘Systems Biology and Longevity: An Emerging Approach to Identify Innovative Anti-Aging Targets and Strategies’, Current Pharmaceutical Design, 16 (2010), 802–13; João Pinto da Costa, et al., ‘A Synopsis on Aging – Theories, Mechanisms and Future Prospects’, Ageing Research Reviews, 29 (2016), 90–112; Alan A. Cohen, et al., ‘A Complex Systems Approach to Aging Biology’, Nature Aging, 2 (2022), 580–91.
9 Cf. Robert Arking, Biology of Longevity and Aging (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 103–42.
10 See Juan Eduardo Carreño, Thomistic Philosophy in the Face of Evolutionary Fact: Methodological and Conceptual Insights for an Integration (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2024), 138–145.
11 Cf. Ulrich Kutschera, Karl J. Niklas, ‘The modern theory of biological evolution: An expanded synthesis’, Naturwissenschaften, 91 (2004), 255–276.
12 For some discussions, see Etienne Gilson, From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species, and Evolution, trans. by John Lyon (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 150–56; John Beatty, ‘Chance and natural selection’, Philosophy of Science, 51 (1984), 183–211; George C. Williams, Natural Selection: Domains, Levels, and Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Björn Brunnander, ‘What is natural selection?’ Biology & Philosophy, 22 (2007), 231–46; Gregory T. Ryan, ‘Understanding natural selection: Essential concepts and common misconceptions’, Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2 (2002), 156–75.
13 Cf. Mark Jobling, Matthew Hurles, Chris Tyler-Smith, Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, Peoples & Disease, 2nd edn, (New York: Garland Science, 2013), p. 502.
14 Cf. Ronald A. Fisher, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), p. 291; Andrew A. Weismann, ‘Theory of Descent’, The American Naturalist, 17 (1883), 1042–46.
15 Cf. Peter B. Medawar, An Unresolved Problem of Biology (London: H. K. Lewis and Company, 1952), p. 14.
16 In other words, the older a tube, the greater its probability of belonging to the group of those eliminated. Ibid., pp. 15–16.
17 Ibid., p. 21.
18 Ibid., pp. 19–20.
19 Williams D. Hamilton, ‘The Moulding of Senescence by Natural Selection’, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 12 (1966), 12–45.
20 This hypothesis has led to what is known today as the grandmother theory, which suggests that the care grandmothers provide for their grandchildren in the early stages of development allows mothers to have a greater number of children, increasing the fitness of the species. This would be another way to ensure that genes last over time. However, despite the name, it remains a hypothesis, since the impact of grandmothers in caring for grandchildren over the history of our species is not entirely clear. Cf. McDonald, Biology of Aging, pp. 69–71.
21 The concept is attributed to Williams in its ‘official’ formulation. However, authors such as Hamilton and Wallace also published in this area, and their contributions cannot be underestimated. See Williams D. Hamilton, ‘The Moulding of Senescence by Natural Selection’, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 12 (1966), 12–45; David C. Wallace, ‘The Inevitability of Growing Old’, Journal of Chronic Diseases, 20 (1967), 475–86.
22 Cf. George C. Williams, ‘Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence’, Evolution, 11 (1957), p. 402.
23 Williams, ‘Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution’, p. 401.
24 Cf. Frank W. Stearns, ‘One Hundred Years of Pleiotropy: A Retrospective’, Genetics, 186 (2010), pp. 767–73.
25 In this context, fitness is understood as the characteristics an individual needs to survive and reproduce in a specific environment and thus increase the chances of transmitting their genes to subsequent generations.
26 Cf. Williams, ‘Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution’, p. 402.
27 Ibid., pp. 398–411.
28 Cf. McDonald, Biology of Aging, p. 86.
29 See Steven N. Austad, Jessica M. Hoffman, ‘Is Antagonistic Pleiotropy Ubiquitous in Aging Biology?’ Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 1 (2018), 287–94; Sean G. Byars, Konstantinos Voskarides, ‘Antagonistic Pleiotropy in Human Disease’, Journal of Molecular Evolution, 88 (2020), 12–25.
30 Cf. Aristotle, De anima II, 1 (Bk 412a 14); II, 2 (Bk 413a 20–25).
31 The list of vegetative operations offered by Aquinas is not always identical. He occasionally mentions aging or decline but does not delve into what distinguishes it from growth. For an example of these various catalogs, see ScG., II, c. 58; In De anima., II, lect. 3, n. 13; lect. 9; S.Th., I, q. 78, a. 2, co; II–II, q. 179, a. 1, co.
32 Cf. Aristotle, De anima II, 4 (Bk 416b 15–20); In De anima, II, lect. 9, n. 13.
33 Cf. Aristotle, De anima II, 4 (Bk 416b 10–15); In De anima, I, lect. 10, n. 13; II, lect. 9, n. 10. In Sent, IV, d. 49, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 3 co.
34 Cf. Aristotle, De anima II, 4 (Bk 415a 25–415b3).
35 For a comment on this point, see Juan Eduardo Carreño, Vivere viventibus est esse: la vida como perfección del ser en la obra de Tomás de Aquino (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2020), pp. 41–45.
36 Cf. Aristotle, De anima II, 1 (Bk 412a 14); ScG., I, c. 97, n. 3; S.Th., I, q. 18, a.1, co.
37 For a more detailed development of this problem and the debate it has generated in Thomism, see Juan Eduardo Carreño, Vivere viventibus est esse: la vida como perfección del ser en la obra de Tomás de Aquino (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2020), pp. 45–51.
38 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica IX, 6 (Bk 1048b 18–34).
39 See, for example, ScG., II, c. 10, n. 1; S.Th., II–II, q. 179, a. 1, ad. 3. Lonergan underlines that Aquinas does not comment on the text of Metaphysica quoted above, probably because he did not know it. Cf. Verbum, Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. by Bernard J. Lonergan, David Burrell, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), p. 102.
40 In some texts, Aquinas describes the difference between the acts of the plant and those carried out by non-living beings in terms that at least evoke the idea of immanence; in others, he explicitly mentions the act of nutrition as an example of operations (which, in the context of those discussions, is equivalent to what we here call the immanent act). See In De anima, II, lect. 9, nn. 9, 10; In Sent., IV, d. 14, q. 2, a. 3, qc. 2, co.
41 Cf. ScC., IV, c. 11, nn. 3–5.
42 For Aquinas, the reproductive operation announces the next degree of life: ‘Et ideo vis generativa quodammodo appropinquat ad dignitatem animae sensitivae, quae habet operationem in res exteriores, licet excellentiori modo et universaliori’. S.Th., I, q. 78, a. 2, co.
43 Cf. In De anima, II, lect. 7, n. 8.
44 Note this also affects man, albeit partially, by virtue of the immortality of his soul. For a discussion of this aspect of Thomistic doctrine, see Obi J. Oguejiofor, The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas (Lanham: University Press of America, 2001).
45 Cf. In De anima, II, lect. 7, n. 9. This intuition is already hinted at in Aristotle. Cf. De anima II, 4 (Bk 415b 3–7). Aquinas affirms, in fact, that the proliferation of species brings more perfection to the universe than that of individuals, since the former is taken from form and the latter from matter. Cf. ScG., II, c. 45, n. 3.
46 ‘Sic autem intelligitur, quod res viva facit alterum quale ipsum est, quia animal facit animal, et planta plantam. Et ulterius secundum speciem tale animal facit tale animal, ut homo generat hominem, et oliva olivam. Ideo autem est naturale viventibus facere alterum tale quale ipsum est, ut semper participent, secundum quod possunt, divino et immortali, id est ut assimilentur ei secundum posse’. In De anima, II, lect. 7, n. 6.
47 In a certain sense, it can be said that the soul moves when the body moves, but it must be kept in mind that this is only in its derived sense, i.e., per accidens.
48 For an exposition of this aspect of Thomistic doctrine, see Juan Eduardo Carreño, ‘The Possibility of an Artificial Living Being in the Light of the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas’, Angelicum, 94 (2017), 635–72.
49 Cf. Aristotle, De anima, I, 4 (Bk 408 b21–22).
50 ‘.. anima non debilitatur debilitato corpore, nec etiam sensitiva; ut patet per id quod philosophus dicit in I de anima, quod si senex accipiat oculum iuvenis, videbit utique sicut et iuvenis. Ex quo manifestum est quod debilitas actionis non accidit propter debilitatem animae, sed organi’. Q. D. De anima., q. 14, ad 18.
51 Cf. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), p. 1068.
52 By contrast, the unity of the collective of living beings is weak, though not subordinate. See David S. Oderberg, ‘The great unifier: Form and the unity of the organism’, in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science, ed. by William R. D Simpson, Robert C. Koons, Nicholas J. Teh, (New York, Routledge, 2018), pp. 211–33.
53 Cf. ScG., II, cc. 63, 64.
54 See Juan Eduardo Carreño, Alejandro Serani, ‘Morfogénesis y envejecimiento’, in Las Razones del Derecho. Estudios en Honor de José Joaquín Ugarte Godoy ed. by Mario Correa et al., (Santiago de Chile: Thomson Reuters, 2021), pp. 123–44.
55 See Antonio Millán-Puelles, Obras Completas, 2 vol.: Fundamentos de Filosofía (Madrid: Rialp, 2013), pp. 138–140.
56 This recursive character of organic life has been underlined from different perspectives and by different traditions of thought, including contemporary theoretical biology, with its well-known formulation of autopoiesis. See the works of Maturana and Varela cited in n. 64.
57 For the purposes of this article, we leave aside the problem of the origin and evolution of life. For more details, see Juan Eduardo Carreño, Thomistic Philosophy in the Face of Evolutionary Fact: Methodological and Conceptual Insights for an Integration (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2024).
58 For the problem of the eduction of the new substantial form, see the article by Mariusz Tabaczek, ‘What do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change? Divine Concurrence and Transformism from the Thomistic perspective’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 93 (2019), 445–482.
59 For the distinction between intraspecific and transspecific evolution, see Carreño, Thomistic Philosophy in the Face of Evolutionary Fact, pp. 261–268; 491–558.
60 Cf. Nicholas Stroustrup, ‘Measuring and modeling interventions in aging’, Current Opinion in Cell Biology, 55 (2018), pp. 129–38; Alan A. Cohen, et al., ‘A Complex Systems Approach to Aging Biology’, Nature Aging, 2 (2022), 580–91.
61 Hayflick has equated human senescence with the deterioration of a car. From that assumption, he has estimated that an eventual cure of the main causes of death in the elderly (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, cerebrovascular accidents, respiratory diseases) would only increase the life expectancy of the general population by approximately 15 years. Cf. Leonard Hayflick, ‘The Future of Aging’, Nature, 408 (2000), 267–69.
62 Cf. Matteo Tosato, et al., ‘The Aging Process and Potential Interventions to Extend Life Expectancy’, Clinical Interventions in Aging, 2 (2007), pp. 401–12.
63 See Alejandro Serani, Mauricio Besio, Sabiduría, naturaleza y enfermedad (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones UC, 2014), pp. 47–54.
64 Cf. Humberto Maturana, Francisco J. Varela, De máquinas y seres vivos: una teoría sobre la organización biológica (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1973); Francisco J. Varela, Humberto Maturana, Roberto Uribe, ‘Autopoiesis: The Organisation of Living Systems, Its Characterization and a Model’, BioSystems, 5 (1974), 187–96.
65 Cf. Cliff Hooker, ‘On the Import of Constraints in Complex Dynamical Systems’, Foundations of Science, 18 (2013), 757–80.
66 Cf. John D. Collier, ‘Autonomy and process closure as the basis for functionality’, in Closure: Emergent Organisations and Their Dynamics, ed. by Jerry L.R. Chandler, Gertrudis van der Vijver, (New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2000), pp. 280–90.
67 Cf. Mark H. Bickhard, ‘Autonomy, Function, and Representation, Communication and Cognition’, Artificial Intelligence, 17 (2000), pp. 111–31.
68 Cf. Stuart A. Kauffman, Investigations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
69 Cf. Alicia Juarrero, ‘Top-down causation and autonomy in complex systems’, in Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will, ed. by Nancey Murphy, George F. R. Ellis, Timothy O’Connor,(Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 2009), pp. 83–102.
70 Cf. Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo, Juli Peretó, Alvaro Moreno, ‘A Universal Definition of Life: Autonomy and Open-Ended Evolution’, Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, 34 (2004), 323–46; Alvaro Moreno, Matteo Mossio, Biological Autonomy (New York: Springer, 2015).
71 Cf. Alvaro Moreno, Matteo Mossio, Biological Autonomy (New York: Springer, 2015), pp. xxvii, xxviiii.
72 Ibid., pp. 1–38; 89–110.
73 Idem.
74 Cf. Christopher J. Austin, ‘A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism’, in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science, ed. by William M.R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, Nicholas J. Teh, (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 185–210.
75 See, for example, Daniel D. De Haan, ‘Hylomorphism and the New Mechanist Philosophy in Biology, Neuroscience, and Psychology’, in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science, ed. by William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, Nicholas J. Teh (New York, Routledge, 2018), pp. 293–326; William Jaworski, Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How Hylomorphism Solves the Mind-Body Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Robert C. Koons, ‘Staunch vs. Faint-hearted Hylomorphism’, Res Philosophica, 91 (2014), pp. 151–77; David S. Oderberg, ‘Is Form Structure?’ in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, ed. by Daniel D. Novotny and Lukáš Novak (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 164–80. See also the work cited in n. 52.