Test methods and tests in the system of professional selection: history and modernity

In accordance with the existing tradition of the study of the scientific concept from two diametrically opposite points of view, namely the formal logic and dialectological ones, the article considers the emergence of prerequisites, the establishment and development of the systems testing human individual abilities. Testing systems evolved from the rituals of initiation in archaic societies to the scientific method of tests created by the early twentieth century. Today, tests are used in the system of professional selection and other segments of society functioning.