| Abstract: | Documents are the products of the deliberate social and cultural activities of people and are included in the subject matter of many scientific disciplines. The formation of the concept of a “document” as interdisciplinary category is one of the problems that the epistemology of documents deals with. The historical method of epistemology applies to the evolution of document communication. To represent stages of document communication development, the concept of an episteme is used. Common interpretations of documents are considered, which have interdisciplinary significance and favor the understanding of document as category of science as a whole. It is shown that development of the general definition of document can’t be considered the problem of any particular documentation theory. It is the problem of unifying theory (metatheory), which is called documentology in contemporary investigations. |
