Time and ageing: a physicist's look at gerontology

Abstract

To enter, as a physicist, into the field of gerontology brings along certain dangers. I will presumably fall into pitfalls of misunderstanding or step on some other booby traps which those who are familiar with the terrain have learned to avoid. This danger is probably even greater since the so-called science wars and the Sokal affair has sensitised the relation between the physics community and those working in the humanities and social sciences in general.