After reading Leonard Shlain's Art & Physics, I agree with you. In the past it was the artists, poets and popular writers who helped the general public consume

After reading Leonard Shlain's Art & Physics, I agree with you. In the past it was the artists, poets and popular writers who helped the general public consume often difficult to grasp ideas. We do seem to be in a lull where the creatives are either beholden to the mass culture of capitalism or to detached from the world of science to communicate it. Those that do are on the fringe and only noticed by small cliques. Art is blooming everywhere right now, but very little of it is civically minded. This is an era of image over substance.