Abstract
The study substantiates the claim that the priority of scientific rationality in social life and the expansion of network communications, both in the scientific sphere and in society as a whole, intensify global communication processes between various agents – representatives of different disciplines and professional circles, science and society, science and government, etc. It is demonstrated that scientific rationality, as a reflection of basic cognitive, axiological, praxeological norms, rules of ideals of researchers' activities, is transforming from an isomorphic, exclusively epistemological phenomenon and methodological regulation into a polymorphic complex combination of communicative, social, moral, ethical or spiritual rationality and context-bound rationality. The new rationality is being formed in the practices of transdisciplinary research, the public sphere of science, and the moral and ethical discourse of our time. Along with cognitive, technical, and technological functions, it performs socio-cultural and humanitarian tasks.