The global knowledge market: Features, evolution

The early twenty-first century witnessed the emergence of new phenomena, among them an unprecedented intensification of formalization and regulation within scientific activity. To explain this development, the article introduces several useful concepts: knowledge as an ordered set of original ideas, models, and theories, their justifications and proofs, along with statistical and historical illustrations; and the knowledge market as the process of coupling the segments of knowledge supply (production) and demand (needs), as well as the acts of their purchase and sale at a given price. To deepen understanding of the global knowledge market's evolution, a three-sector model is proposed, comprising a knowledge core (fundamental, scientific knowledge), a periphery (auxiliary or secondary knowledge), and pseudo- or anti-knowledge (outdated, rejected, and erroneous knowledge). This structural model of the knowledge market enables a more focused examination of three global trends and their resulting phenomena: the first (the Great Castling) consists of the accelerated accumulation of knowledge to the point of transitioning from scarcity to surplus in the market; the second (the Great Inversion) entails the rising cost of knowledge production concurrent with a decline in its returns, such that the marginal cost of producing knowledge exceeds its marginal utility; and the third (the Great Erosion) signifies an increasing share of anti- and pseudo-knowledge within the total stock of knowledge. This corresponds to the development of crisis phenomena such as glut, unprofitability, and widespread defective output. It is precisely this crisis-ridden state of the market that has driven the evolutionary shift from the "knight of science" model (service model), in which past researchers were ready to make great sacrifices in the name of science, to the "bureaucrat and imitator" model (business model), in which today's researchers largely adapt to the bureaucratic demands of their organizations and skillfully simulate scientific activity. Overcoming the current crisis may be possible through "unloading" the market by "writing off" outdated and irrelevant cognitive products, which entails a transition from an additive paradigm of knowledge acquisition to a subtractive one.