Any science needs self-reflection, the development of knowledge about itself. The continuation of the investigation performed in the Soviet period by the O.S. Ioffe on the logics of the civil law thinking20 development would be extremely useful for the civil science studies. Such a work based on the post-Soviet civil law material is of great interest and can show the directions of the further research. This is because the scientist looks at the researched phenomenon through the prism of the scientific knowledge existing at the present moment.
Every meaningful, productive research of the legal phenomena, including those of the civil law character, should start with establishing the methodological principles and frames of work. That is why, the researches should first of all be taught to use different methods of cognition and be equipped with the methodological tools.
The question about what the scientific methodology is, is a complicated question not only for the civilians but also for the methodologists of the science, for the philosophers and the theorists of the law. But the general scientific complexity of the problem should not lead to avoiding it in the specific sciences.
At present, the situation is created in the sphere of the civil law researches, when the methodology, in a manner of speaking, “takes a revenge” over the civil science: the full ignoring of the methodological aspects of the scientific research, the lack of understanding of the essence and the meaning of the methodology, the failure to use the system of the general and the specific scientific cognition methods leads to the diluting the very core of the science, to the intensive multiplication of the scientific “plankton”, to the research of the civil “chimeras” instead of the really existing problems. N.A. Vlasenko rightly characterized the state of the modern scientific thought as the “circulation of the muddy water”21. It is a pity this characteristic is applicable to many scientific researches being performed.
The methodology of the science is traditionally understood as a complex of the scientific cognition methods. Nevertheless, as known, the entire is always bigger than a simple set of the components: a kit for making a plane – is not yet a plane itself.