Four Past Path-Builders Incorporated the Humanities and Arts Into Gerontology’s Scientific Frontiers

Abstract

Abstract Scholars and practitioners in the humanities and arts are collaborating with bio-medico-psycho-social scientists and clinicians in projects that illuminate current understandings of how “aging” processes unfold and what they may mean in creating the future of the Gerontological Society of America. Moving ahead by connecting backwards, we should emulate past path-builders who imagined an interdisciplinary agenda that incorporated humanistic perspectives as they imparted scientific age-based insights to experts and lay audiences. Elie Metchnikoff, G. Stanley Hall, Robert N. Butler, and Gene D. Cohen demonstrated critical humanist thinking about aging and dying in advancing gerontology’s scientific frontiers.