The article comprehends the scientific and educational prerequisites of the philosophical and methodological experience of the Russian philosopher Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov (1828-1896). The authors demonstrate  the key events of Strakhov's intellectual biography, which influenced the formation of his peculiar intellectual position in the field of philosophy and methodology of natural science. The historically oriented character and positive orientation of Strakhov's methodological criticism of the foundations of his contemporary natural science are clarified. It is shown that the holistic understanding of the integrity and structure of the subject of cognition (scientific, first of all) was largely conditioned by the peculiarities of the philosophical and his own natural science education received by N.N. Strakhov during his studies at the Main Pedagogical Institute and during his primary research orientation – in his master's thesis "On the bones of the mammalian wrist".