When there is too much of a good thing, it somehow does not feel just so good. This perfectly applies to the present state of science and the ways it enters the mind-in-the-street.

Modern industry demands intricate cooperation of billions of people, each worker producing the prerequisites of somebody else's work. There is nothing that a single person could do; even the most basic physiological functions are gradually cultivated to the degree of utter impossibility of doing the same outside a specific artificial environment.

Some ideologists admit exceptions for the sphere of spirituality, including art, science and philosophy. Individual creativity may seem to dominate in such immaterial production. This illusion flatters the pride of those who do not have to fight hard for mere survival, and who can afford themselves enough leisure for apparently purposeless pastime. However, even such abstract doers need certain material conditions to implement their musings as well as some acquaintance with what can, in principle, be done. Their inspiration always comes from the outside; their product must eventually be presented to the public. And this already implies dependence on the overall level of material production and the current cultural trends. An artist, a scientist, or a philosopher needs social support; even imaginary audience (or self-reference) is to condense from the historically known forms of communication and productive collaboration.

In this view, a sequence of great names in the history of science does not much impress a person of reason, who perfectly understands that such verbal marks are only used for convenience, to refer to the objective aspects of science, just like scientific terminology is merely to materialize scientific notions to simplify scheme exchange. A genius feeds from the great pasture of minor predecessors, and the quality of this grass determines the merits of the breed. A wider access to the present conceptual diversity means more chances to consolidate it in an obvious achievement fit to become a guide sign on the way to the future.

This brings up the question of the erudition standards required to ensure the cultural acceptance of the scientific outcome of each individual contributor. Early renaissance writers dreamt about truly encyclopedic education, combing experiences of all kinds into a comprehensive picture of the world. By the XVI century, it was already clear that this ideal is utterly unreachable: the overall bulk of knowledge could overwhelm the brightest mind of the epoch, raising the a problem of triage, sorting out real values from the relics of clumsy tradition. François Rabelais gave a vivid parody of the idea of educational universalism. Later thinkers grouped around a new encyclopedic project suggesting that a well educated person is to merely get acquainted with the principal achievements of human spirituality, possibly cultivating in-depth knowledge in a few special domains. Today, this attitude seems as utopian, since the diversity of the culture has grown beyond any limits, while the volume of special research in each science can no longer be assimilated within one's lifetime. Our approach to learning is to mutate once again; the reign of popular science has come.

The flux of news is impossible to master. Things happen every second, and a thousand reports break in. There is no way to keep on the edge of novelty; even less chance to learn from the past. We are too slow to follow ourselves. So, a lay person is to stick to odd fragments, popular descriptions, strained interpretations, random hearsay. The dawn of vulgarity, that new sun of the humankind.

Is it any different with scientists? The keenest mind will have no advantage before the rest as soon as it dares to get beyond the professional domain. However the domestic erudition is hardly any better. No scientist can read every book about their science. Yes, there are repetitions that could be skipped with a light heart. Still, the alternative expositions of the same carry the air of mental freedom which is of crucial importance for scientific creativity; to deliberately leave out this part of work is like cutting off a chunk of the brain. Now, look at those heaps of scientific journals! Their gross volumes could exponentially expand if there had been enough wealthy subscribers. An active researcher has to filter out papers on a narrow topic of current interest; and this too is becoming a sort of separate research, however armed with advanced indexing facilities. That is, any knowledge at all tends to coincide with good luck, a condescension of infinity; instead of trustable truth, the wide public is fed with sheer opinions inevitably acquiring a tint of vulgarity. Modern science is not convincing; it may give clues to doing things, but it does not give any reasons. Scientific talk is utterly incomprehensible; to get at least something, people have to develop their own vision of the world from scratch, regardless of any professional assessments.

What market economy can suggest to cure the pest? Quite expectedly, it does not much care. Capitalism is about dividing money rather than sharing knowledge. For all occasions, the same answer: division of labor. If you are too feeble to manage the whole, let others profit from what they can grab. Unfortunately, infinitesimal allotments do not give enough crop to stay in. The old pun about a professional who knows everything about nothing is no longer funny, since nobody could be said to completely master a thing. Desperately trying to remain experts in naught, scientists lose their market value as the very notion of creative priority becomes diluted in an impersonal mass effect. Just say something, and you'll find that a thousand people have already said the same in many ways and treated in a most comprehensive manner, albeit in a different respect. Don't complain that it's impossible to review all the relevant literature; it's your personal problem.

As a matter of fact, the inevitable degradation of an individual is built in the class economy from the very beginning. Divide et impera, the slogan of the Ancient Rome. Capitalism admits everybody's equal capabilities, and free choice of occupation, but as professional specialization takes over, there is no way to change the once chosen specialty, and any economic shift turns out to be a personal crash. Market competition did much to increase the overall productivity in industry; however, the rate of acquiring new skills remained on the same level, so that it takes a lot of time (and money) to switch to a different job. Capitalists are not interested in drastically reducing the learning time; moreover, there is no free access to many proprietary fields and copyrighted literature, which hinders preventive self-education.

In science, the situation is basically the same, with hardly affordable education, low quotas of professional licensing (and hence limited access to research facilities), and the practical impossibility to trespass on a foreign domain. The ideologists of the market science insist that, since organic metabolism is too slow, the human brain is no longer sufficient to respond to the present educational demands, and the gift of individual creativity is to be eventually sacrificed to some systems of distributed knowledge, with highly specialized biological elements entirely dominated by the collective whole. Each person will be included in a number of social networks and perform a partial function of an essentially biological nature, with intellect superseding reason.

Admitting that reason is in no way restricted to sheer biology, I cannot agree with the logic of enslaving individuals rather than liberating them. Yes we need a better thinking material, but all kinds of social interconnection will serve as an extension of one's personality rather than its replacement. Computers do not come to subdue the humanity; they merely amplify its mental capacity, just like mechanical machines amplify the strength of the arm and the precision of fingers. The discouraging complexity of modern science is mainly due to inadequate modes of knowledge production and consumption intrinsically related to the principal traits of the market economy. Instead of accumulating knowledge, the focus should be shifted to its reproduction; similarly, the mass production system of today will be replaced by a flexible (and more economical) paradigm of production on demand. Instead of knowledge exchange (learning), we can share access to knowledge production tools, reproducing every particular detail when we really need it and forgetting it as soon as we come to a general idea enough to make any practical decisions. We don't need a hammer when a nail has been driven in a wooden plank; still, we keep it within reach to employ the next time, when needed.

In this way, people can drastically reduce the bulk of irrelevant data, to concentrate on creative tasks proper. Since knowledge production tools are much more portable than traditional databases, there will be no professional barriers, and no professional cretinism; every person can enter any domain at all without additional education, since the universality of cognition will do the rest. Such economy is incompatible with the market: there is nothing to trade or exchange, while everybody is free to share and participate. Economic and cultural development will proceed in this direction, gradually extending the sphere of market-free cooperation.

It is important that the very idea of science is essentially related to social self-reflection rather than material production. That is, the products of science do not need to be stored as ready-made things, provided they have been incorporated in culture as fundamental principles. Books, papers, samples, or experimental setup do not contain knowledge; they merely present it in one of the possible forms, sometimes far from being optimal. The diversity of the material traces will grow; but all we need is to keep on our universality, deliberately switching to a different, more adequate language when the former mode of expression gets too complex, and hence too restrictive.

Can we find any existing prototypes of this new level of scientific thought? Yes, in a way. Comparing science to philosophy, we observe that the latter does not need too much detail to come to a universal scheme of practical importance, including scientific applications. The apparent immensity of knowledge has nothing to do with the character of philosophical categories which contain all the possible explications in a folded form that can produce an elaborated hierarchical structure wherever needed. Once we have comprehended the whole, we do not need to "prove" it every time. A similar principle is implicitly built in scientific methodology, and it can be developed into a full-fledged hierarchy of knowledge production. Don't try to learn everything; just take the necessary minimum to understand. Don't seek for formal perfection; this diverts you from true comprehension hiding the forest behind the trees. Observe the principle of reasonable sufficiency and forget about professional segregation, cooperating with artists and philosophers, or any amateurs, taking what they really mean, regardless of the obviously non-scientific attitude. This will bring you to the level of culture as a whole, liberating from too narrow subcultures, and hence to the infinity of science as such, overcoming the vulgarity of special sciences.