Ethology developed as an objectivistic approach presuming that the animal mind should be excluded from scientific consideration. Konrad Lorenz was a proponent of an objectivistic line of research; however, he was deeply interested in the inner subjective world of animals and in the mind-body problem. At the initial stage of elaborating ethological theory, his consideration of subjective phenomena helped him understand the specific character of instinctive animal behavior. Lorenz was interested in some interrelated issues concerning animal mind: the validity of analogies between animal and human mind, the possibility of scientific examination of animal mind and of its content. He appreciated the value of the analogies, but his attitude towards these problems varied during his life. Lorenz maintained that the barrier between psychological and physiological domains is insuperable for rational thought. Holding the monistic worldview, he was convinced that subjective and physiological phenomena are, in reality, one and the same, which we recognize by means of two incommensurable cognitive capacities.

In medicine, a subtle but very significant distinction is made between etiology and pathogenesis. Often, to be aware of this difference is crucial for a correct diagnosis, successful treatment, as well as for a realistic and accurate prognosis. Philosophy can provide some methodological suggestions how to distinguish one from the other and how more successfully to make the transition between them. J.S. Mill’s inductive methods could serve as a model for the etiological approach to causation in medicine, while G. B. Vico’s verum-factum principle embodies the main elements and elucidates the very ground of pathogenesis. Mill’s strategy could be likened to a black-box method when certain events produce some results but we do not, cannot, and, perhaps, do not want to know why and how. Vico’s intention is opposite to Mill’s: his verum-factum dictum aims exactly at discovering and explaining why and how something happens.

In line with the perspective provided by the intentional paradigm which claims that the measures of subjective well-being (SWB), whether cognitive or affective, should refer to life itself, the Ontological Well-Being Scale (OWBS) has been operationalized. The research reported herein was aimed at developing and validating this psychometric tool in the assessment of individuals’ affective evaluations of their life within a three-time perspective. Five studies were conducted to confirm the factor structure of the OWBS and to assess its construct validity. Four factors were derived and validated, which were shown to relate to mental health indicators and personality in expected ways. It was found that this new construct, in contrast with the current measures, did not tap into the personality factors of extraversion and neuroticism. Incremental validity results showed that the OWBS explained additional variance in mental health indicators already captured by the current measures of SWB.

Two American distinguished philosophers of biology, Lindley Darden and C. Kenneth Waters, respectively proposed a way to emphasize the significance of scientific practice in constructing new biological theories for more than a decade. Darden’s strategy is the mechanism-based one towards discovery of new mechanisms (hereafter MD) while Waters’ approach is phenomenon-based towards the investigation of new phenomena (hereafter PI). Though both of MD and PI pay attention to the heuristic role of new phenomena in the laboratory, they explore it from different approaches. MD pursues new mechanisms, but it is still partial to theory instead of practical work. PI emphasizes the investigative utility of new phenomena, but it doesn’t illustrate the detailed process about how to integrate new phenomena with original data. Either MD or PI refers to one part of the significance, but neither of them is complete. We try to make up the shortage by “Experimental Discovery” (hereafter ED). ED offers the way including three steps: organizing new phenomena into the data model; producing the need and motivation to discover mechanisms; and constraining the direction for the construction of a new theory. With ED, we could and should see the discovery of new mechanisms, the investigation of new phenomena and the construction of new theories with attendant data models become a new three-in-one approach, MD-PI-ED, as the whole process of scientific practice in biology.

Depuis la «fondation du monde», l’humanisme a toujours considéré l’homme comme un «être à part», en tout cas, différent du reste du vivant. Le propos consiste ici à décrire la portée réelle de la révolution darwinienne, qui l’a précipité dans la nature, à partir d’une lecture imprédictible de l’histoire du vivant, encouragée par Gould en particulier, dont les conséquences sont autant logiques qu’éthiques.

Формирующаяся ныне, под воздействием биологических идей, современная научная картина мира – это не только синтетическое систематизированное и целостное представление о мире на данном этапе развития научного познания в его логической форме отображения действительности, но и результат синтеза всех фундаментальных составляющих философского знания нашего исторического периода, включающих онтологические, методологические, аксиологические и праксиологические аспекты.