The article discusses the scholarly work of the renowned essayist and literary and cultural critic M. Epstein. Analyzing his Projective Dictionary of Humanistic Disciplines [Proektivniy slovar gumanitarnykh nauk] (2017), and parts of Encyclopaedia of Youth [Entsiklopediya yunosti] (co-authored by S. Iourienen, 2018), the author examines Epstein’s strategy for coining terms as well as the methodological assumptions at its core. The latter include, in particular, the assumption about a direct connection between scholarly knowledge and language, and the idea of language as a passive and ahistorical element. Epstein’s approach appears to be a peculiar fusion of scholarship and mythologism, and risky innovation and archaic methodological elements — an approach that is predetermined by Epstein’s adherence to the intellectual tradition that he himself defined as essayism, borrowing the term from R. Musil. The article is also concerned with the evolution of this intellectual trend, characterized by the absence of distinct genre boundaries, mythologism, and the claim to ‘superdisciplinarity.’