and social. As we try to understand phenomena, we describe and
explain them in terms of analogies, similarities, and metaphors re-
lating to things we know more about. In seeking to understand
aging, we are implicitly asking, What is aging like? To establish use-
ful scientific discourse and a program of research about aging, we
need to embrace many of its facets within a few integrative concepts
or metaphors ( Binstock & George, 1990; Birren & Schaie, 1990;
Schneider & Rowe, 1990). As we learn more about aging, we will in
turn use it as a metaphor in explaining other things, but at present
aging usually is what is to be explained. Although the study of aging
in a scientific sense is barely a hundred years old, the roots of our ex-
planations and the desire to characterize aging go back to antiquity
( Gruman, 1966).

Our understanding of age and aging is intimately linked with
concepts of time (see Schroots & Birren, 1990). Birren and Cun-
ningham wrote that "time is the messenger of the gods, a messenger
who passes [without restraint] through space, matter, energy, and
minds" ( 1985, p. 3). This expresses the idea that time carries causal
messages from the gods to all systems of the universe, including the
minds of man.

Recently Treas and Passuth pointed out that in sociology there
are "three very distinct research traditions [that] are identified with
the renaissance of aging studies" ( 1988). They regarded these tradi-
tions as being the sociology of age, the sociology of the aged, and the
sociology of aging. The sociology of age deals with institutional ar-
rangements and cultural factors that recognize age-group differ-
ences. Objects of study in the sociology of age are the age structure
of society and also the relations between age groups or cohorts. In
contrast, the sociology of the aged focuses on old people, with con-
cern for their well-being, social supports, income, mortality and
health, and other factors.

Treas and Passuth view the sociology of aging as examining the
continuity of persons as they age. They say that "both social and bio-
logical explanations have been posed for the myriad of age-related
changes in individuals, but the sociogenic and the biogenic roots of
development have only begun to be formally recognized and recon-
ciled" (p. 395). To the sociogenic and biogenic roots of development
they suggest, we would add psychogenic contributions to growing

-2-