The relatively new discipline of historical epistemology, quite thoroughly founded in the Western academia and still needing consideration and evaluation in the Russian scientific tradition, constitutes an object of ongoing discussions regarding its substance, methodological apparatus and originality. A number of authors of scientific periodicals (Yves Gingras, etc.) claim that historical epistemology is a new name for an old approach and that the designated discipline lacks authenticity. Meanwhile, historical epistemology should be recognized as the result of the development of epistemological thought of the late 19-20 c. and the true phenomenon of modernity.