In 1872, a century after the appearance of the last volume of the Encyclopédie, any collection of knowledge had to resort to the superficial treatment of a rapidly expanding range of topics, and, one and a half centuries later, it is impossible to sum up our understanding even within narrowly circumscribed specialties: such terms as “physics” or “biology” are fairly meaningless labels, and experts in particle physics would find it very hard to understand even the first page of a new research paper in viral immunology. Obviously, this atomization of knowledge has not made any public
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