Vern L. Bengtson, PhD
K. Warner Schaie, PhD
Editors

How important are theories of aging? Does the time-consuming exercise of
building theories-by which we mean the development of explanations to
account for empirical relationships—have much relevance to the rapidly
expanding field of gerontology recently? Has theory become outmoded, perhaps
archaic, in the science and practice of aging today?
The purpose of this Handbook is to advance the development and applications
of theories of aging. Its intended audience is the next generation of
researchers in gerontology: graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior
investigators—those who will be charting the course of knowledge development
in aging during the first decades of the 21st Century.
These future leaders in gerontological research have been learning the
tools of their trade in an intellectual and scientific context that seems, at the
end of the 20th Century, increasingly dismissive of the importance of theory.
Technological sophistication in statistical modeling—but not theoreticallybased
explanations—appear to be demanded by journal reviewers today.
Applications of research findings to specific problems—but not basic research
to advance theoretical development—seem to be the priority of NIH
study sections reviewing grants. At the same time, some critics are saying
that we are at The End of Science (Morris, 1996), while postmodernists have
suggested that the very enterprise of theoretical explanation is little more
than intellectual nonsense.
We feel that there is a need to reestablish the importance of theory in
discourse about problems of aging. We feel it is valuable to emphasize the
primacy of explanation in the vastly expanding scientific literature reporting
empirical findings about aging.