Old Age, New Science

Old Age, New Science explores how a group of American and British life scientists contributed to gerontology’s development as a multidisciplinary field. It examines the foundational “biosocial visions” they shared, a byproduct of both their research and the social problems they encountered. Hyung Wook Park reveals how these visions shaped popular discourses on aging, directly influenced the institutionalization of gerontology, and reflected the class, gender, and race biases of their founders.
Old Age, New Science explores how a group of American and British life scientists contributed to gerontology’s development as a multidisciplinary field. It examines the foundational “biosocial visions” they shared, a byproduct of both their research and the social problems they encountered. Hyung Wook Park shows how these visions shaped popular discourses on aging, directly influenced the institutionalization of gerontology, and also reflected the class, gender, and race biases of their founders.

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Park's splendid accomplishment appears propitiously. Park extends to newcomers and veterans in gerontology illuminating lessons. Mining the past for precedents that might inform present thinking entails more than prefatory throat-clearing. Park shows a second generation of gero-historians how to offer possibilities for rediscovering patterns and mechanisms through concerted searches for a usable past.

The Gerontologist

Fills an important gap in the historical literature...Park has done important work in an impressive array of archival holdings as well as scientific publications.

Journal of History of Medicine and Allied Science

Through extensive archival research, Hyung Wook Park has unearthed a wealth of fascinating detail about the work of the pioneering life scientists who established gerontology as a multidisciplinary scientific field. His book will likely stand for some time as the definitive historical account of gerontology.

Jesse Ballenger, author of Self, Senility, and Alzheimer's Disease in Modern America: A History

An extremely valuable contribution to the studies of knowledge of aging, adding crucial insights into how the problem was framed as a multidisciplinary scientific research field.

Medical History

Table of Contents

Sample

Gerontologists and Their Biosocial Visions, 1900–1960

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384 Pages, 5.7 x 8.7 in.

May, 2016

isbn : 9780822944492

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