Science and philosophy have both undergone radical transformations in recent times. Now they are poised for a pivotal alliance. Science has abandoned the mechanistic model of nature. Philosophy has broken through the tight, traditional circle of conceptualisation, intellectualistic preconceptions and cognitive presuppositions. The two now meet to focus on the palpitating, fluctuating stream of nature/life. Their traditional prejudices dispersed under the pressure of new evidence, philosophy/phenomenology of life and the sciences of life meet in the Archimedean point of the human creative condition (proper to the phenomenology of life) and the role of the human subject (central to the scientific view of reality). They necessitate each other: without the sciences of life, philosophy/phenomenology of life cannot penetrate the intricacies of nature/life; without recourse to philosophy to delineate, design, provide clues to the organisation of natural evidence, the sciences of life cannot devise new strategies for inquiry nor survey their field. The present collection throws open the barriers that separate nature and culture, works of physis and those of the spirit. Following the philosophical model of the ontopoieisis of life, focusing on its specifically human sphere - that of the human self-interpretation-in-existence - it encircles the vast, new horizons of the new alliance.

Medicine's crucial concern with health is perennial, but its reflection, concepts, means change with the advance of science and social life. We present here a fascinating panorama of current medical discussions with their philosophical underpinnings, and queries as they have evolved from the past. The role of Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life is brought forth as the system of philosophical reference.

The challenge presented by the recent tendencies to "naturalize" phenomenology, on the basis of the progress in biological and neurological sciences, calls for an investigation of the traditional mind-body problem. The progress in phenomenological investigation is up to answering that challenge by placing the issues at stake upon a novel platform, that is the ontopoiesis of life.

Poetry of life in literature and through literature, and the vast territory in between - as vast as human life itself - where they interact and influence each other, is the nerve of human existence. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are profoundly dissatisfied with the stark reality of life's swift progress onward, and the enigmatic and irretrievable meaning of the past. And so we dramatise our existence, probing deeply for a lyrical and heartfelt yet universally valid sense of our experience. It is in great works of literature that we seek those hidden springs that so move us. It is in honour of this search that this collection focuses on the creative imagination at work in literature and aesthetics.

Are emotions, feelings, sentiments not the stuff of literature? That is where they project their 'inner logic' of aesthetic transmutation; there, beyond the instrument of language that they command. This collection explores how the lyrical virtualities of life-experience and the elegiac style in literature share a common core, lifting the human significance of life from abysmal vitality to esoteric heights, from abysmal grief to a serene reconciliation with destiny. The 'elegiac sequence' in the play of emotions, feelings, sentiments brings together life and literary creativity in its transformatory power. With papers by A. Giuculescu, John McGraw, R. Ellis, A. Carillo Canán, B. Watson, S. Bindeman, R.J. Wilson, L. Kimmel, B. Prochaska, T. Raczka, Chr. Eykman, J.S. Smith, G. Scheper, S. Feshbach, I. Vayl, H. Rudnick and others.

In medicine the understanding and interpretation of the complex reality of illness currently refers either to an organismic approach that focuses on the physical or to a 'holistic' approach that takes into account the patient's human sociocultural involvement. Yet as the papers of this collection show, the suffering human person refers ultimately to his/her existential sphere. Hence, praxis is supplemented by still other perspectives for valuation and interpretation: ethical, spiritual, and religious. Can medicine ignore these considerations or push them to the side as being subjective and arbitrary? Phenomenology/philosophy-of-life recognizes all of the above approaches to be essential facets of the Human Condition (Tymieniecka). This approach holds that all the facets of the Human Condition have equal objectivity and legitimacy. It completes the accepted medical outlook and points the way toward a new `medical humanism'.

Education is the transmission of knowledge and skill from one generation to another, and is vitally significant for the growth and unfolding of the living individual. It manifests the quintessential ability of the logos to differentiate life in self-individualization from within, and in its spread through inter-generative networks. The present collection of papers focuses on the underpinnings of the creative workings of the human strategies of reason.

Employing her original concept of the ontopoiesis of life, the author uncovers the intrinsic law of the primogenital logos - that which operates in the working of the indivisible dyad of impetus and equipoise. This is the crucial, intrinsically motivated device of logoic constructivism. This key instrument is engaged - is at play - at every stage of the advance of life. In a feat unprecedented in the history of western philosophy, the emergence and unfolding of the entire orbit of the human universe is shown to bear out this insight. Furthermore, the intrinsic rhythms of impetus and equipoise are taken as a guide in uncovering the workings of the logos all at once, in contrast to the piecemeal exposition of a single line of argument. In a schema covering the entire career of beingness-in-becoming between the infinities of origin and destiny, an historically unprecedented harmonizing all sectors of rationality is accomplished in a span of reflection comparable to Spinoza's Ethics. The work draws on interdisciplinary investigations in both science and the arts. All of the history of Occidental philosophy finds summary in it, even as feelers, guidelines, leitmotifs are thrown out for its future development. A landmark of Occidental philosophy at the turn of the millennium.

What is truth? This fascinating spectrum of studies into the various rationalities of our human dealings with life - psychological, aesthetic, economic, spiritual - reveals their joints and calls for a new approach to truth. Putting both classical and contemporary conceptions aside, we find the primogenital ground of truth in the networks of correspondences, adequations, relevancies, and rationales at work in life's becoming. Does this plurivocal differentiation mean that the status of truth is relative? On the contrary, submits Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, given the universal significance of the crucial instrument of the logos of life, "truth is the vortex of life's ontopoietic unfolding".

Prompted and ever diversified by the specifically human interrogative logos, scientific inquiries seek a common system of links in order to mutually confirm and rectify their results. Coming closer and closer to phenomenology, the sciences of life find the common ground of the reality in the ontopoiesis of life. Could it not be that the interrogative logos of science, participating in human creative inventiveness will bring together also the divergent scientific methods in a common network? A network which comprises natural processes, societal sharing-in-life, and existential communication. Papers by: Gary Backhaus, Anjana Bhattacharjee, Simon Du Plock, Ignacy Fiut, Maria Golaszewska, Wendy C. Hamblet, Alexandr Kouzmin, Nikolay Kozhevnikov, Olga Louchakova, Jarlath Mc Kenna, Amy Louise Miller, Aria Omrani, Arthur Piper, Leszek Pyra, W. Kim Rogers, A.L. Samian, Camilo Serrano Bonitto, Natalia Smirnova, Eva Syristova, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Roberto Verolini, Eldon C. Wait, Leo Zonneveld.