Abstract

The article deals with the problem of representation and considers such points as its necessity in science, contemporary crisis of representation and its possible outcome. The paper also scrutinizes the case of representation of scientific researches by means of scientometrics methods. The need of the representations in science is determined by three points: absence of the direct access to the fact, certainty of the fact which exceeds the certainty of the immediate experience and consolidation of the scientific community by any stable representation. The sense of crisis concerns the confusion of the representation with the reality and the fact that it hides the reality as well. The scientific research is necessarily represented by means of scientometrics methods, which is connected with the unintelligibility of the idea of the scientific researches to the outsiders. The idea of quantitatively estimated scientific outcome replaces the essential, qualitative intentions and impedes to achieve them. This fact evokes the criti­cism against scientometrics methods from the side of scientific community. The authors suggest the ways to overcome this crisis. One of the steps against it implies the attention to the genesis of such type of representation. This means keeping in mind the fact that scientometrics appeared on the basis of the scientific com­munity’s necessity to search for the information about already existing researches and to disseminate the ideas.