However, all the claims of researchers of this type to the creation of general theories of aging turned out to be completely untenable. This is not surprising since it is not methodologically correct to reduce the general laws and principles (namely, at this level, the analysis of the essence and cause of aging should be carried out) to separate mechanisms and manifestations – to particular aspects of the complex and diverse phenomenon of aging. The extreme specialization of modern scientists, which has led to just such a result, in recent years has finally been realized that it has stimulated the development of general methods of analysis – the theory of systems, self-organization, cybernetics, synergetics, etc. allow you to see the features of a common single natural theory of aging, to the creation of which all scientists aspired. The rapid development of statistics and demography somewhat overshadowed by the biology of aging, the achievements obtained by specialists in life expectancy biology. Thus, data from radiobiology, largely based on an analysis of the survival rate of irradiated animals, showed the possibility of accelerating natural aging – this is practically the only method that makes it possible to simulate accelerated aging adequate to the natural one. An analysis of historical mortality data allowed us to detect the phenomenon of the historical stability of the age-related component of mortality with a sharp decrease in the background or “external medium” component of mortality, which indicates the possibility of a sharp decrease in mortality due to socio-preventive measures, but denies the possibility of influencing in this way essentially, on the essential, internal processes of aging for the body (Dontsov, 2019).
Comparison of the age-related component of mortality for different regions of the World showed that although for each region they are historically stable, they differ for different regions.
It was mathematics that long ago resolved the dispute about the Maximum life span, as biologists believed, the “ultimate survival age” for organisms, replacing the absolute limit with the probabilistic survival law, as well as radically changing the notion of hereditary longevity, the ability to increase the Maximum life span with disease does not match the essence of aging, etc.
1.3. Methodology of knowledge: three stages, three paradigms
The presence of hundreds of theories of aging to date indicates not only and not so much the lack of a unified theory, general views, or lack of knowledge of the causes and essence of aging, but often a methodological lack of understanding of the subject matter. Although many gerontologists understood the importance of general biological laws (Bogomolets, 1938; Comfort, 1967; Dilman, 1981; Dogel, 1922; Frolkis V.V., Muradjan, 1992; Korshelt, 1925; Streler, 1964; Shmalgausen, 1926; Nagorny A.V., Nikitin V.N., Bulankin, 1963; Vojtenko, Poljuhov, 1986; Zavadsky, 1923), the main attention was drawn to the study of specific mechanisms of aging, issued as a reason. Science in historical development has gone through three stages, and each is characterized by its own general paradigm.
The first stage is determinism, which has received its maximum expression, apparently, in Laplace. According to his extreme ideas, know-ledge of the initial conditions uniquely determines everything that follows: knowledge of the initial coordinates and momentum of all particles at the Beginning of the World uniquely determines its picture to the present moment and the future of the World. The main disadvantage of this methodical approach is the mechanism: everything is predetermined by initial conditions, there is no freedom, in fact, there is no place for life, feeling, intelligence, free will and the whole diversity of the real World.
The subsequent development of science has changed this view of the opposite. The stochastic vision of the World, most pronounced in probability theory and quantum mechanics, was based on the recognition of a physical law stating that it is impossible to simultaneously and accurately determine the coordinate and momentum – the uncertainty principle in quantum physics. However, the proliferation of global stochasticity as a method from the micro level to the level of complex objects led to another extreme – the general unpredictability of phenomena, which also does not correspond to the state of things.
The development of a systems approach brought science out of a methodological crisis, while not discarding what has been achieved. Already one enumeration of its characteristic features, shown below, shows the enormous potential possibilities of a systematic approach – a new, whole world view (Checkland, 1986; Wolfram, 2002, etc.).
1.4. Features of the system approach as a modern universal scientific method of problem analysis
1.4.1. Using a systematic approach to analyze оf aging process
Already a short review of the system analysis requirements for the aging phenomenon makes it possible to see a number of crucially important points for analyzing the problem.
The principle of unity of the whole requires that a certain integral self-sufficient system be put in the basis of consideration. This means that the full consideration of aging is possible only for the level of the whole organism. Indeed, at the level of populations, the very concept of aging is blurred, as at the level of cells and molecules, when you can get a variety of cultural phenomena and interpret them in an arbitrary way. The importance of the principle of integrity, unity of the organism as a system is also clearly seen in the first experience of heart transplantation: in a couple of years the transplanted young heart was not much different from the old one: aging was directed by the whole organism, and the young part could not preserve its youth in the old organism. The same applies to the transfer of young stem cells to the old organism and vice versa: old cells retain their potencies and can manifest them in a young organism, while young cells reduce their abilities in the old organism (Albright., Makinodan,1976; Gorskaya et al., 2011) – the determining role of the microenvironment and external influences on the state of cells.
Considering the reality of universal interrelationships is all the more important since aging is a long-lasting process. At the same time, small changes and “side” for the main consideration of the reaction are decisive. So, besides the reactions directed by enzymes studied in biochemistry, all possible physicochemical processes in biological systems actually take place, which forms the basis of the aging processes in the form of “contamination” with secondary metabolites. Similarly, the universality of interrelations means a really huge number of influences on a real-life system and determines its fundamental vulnerability: the mortality of a particular system cannot be zero and even an “eternally young” organism will not be immortal – the stochastic mechanism of mortality. The same, when applied to specific internal structures, reveals the stochastic mechanism of system aging.
The idea that parts of a whole are not separate entities, but units of division of a fundamentally different type (entity-in-relationship) allows us to apply analysis methods at the abstract level and consider the real structure by considering the essential relationships of structural