The paper deals with the scientism, historism, cultural studies, methods of historical cognition and ways of the cognition of the reality. The pretension of the natural science to the achieving of the objective knowledge leads to the efforts to ground history as a science similar to natural science, which discovers the laws of social life, cognizes that which “happened in reality”. That approach was realized in the 19th century historiography with its principles of historism implying universality and stages of the social and historical development. The culturological approach within historiography pointing out the individuality and uniqueness of the historical events, admitting the presence of the historical sense and striving for the cognition of the ideals and values by which the people were guided in the past was formulated as the alternative to scientism. History, philosophy of history and methodology of history did not work out a united approach to history. In the strict sense of the word scientistic and