It's true that you get the wackier shadings the deeper you drift towards the New Age, but there are some common narratives, such as
Scientists are primitive and don't understand the really clever stuff
Scientists are working for Sinister Dark Forces. In one example I found recently downtown Auckland had been dotted with mysterious radio aerials.
By the time you get there you're well into crank territory. But the point is really that with public buy-in, instead of public alienation from science, this kind of thing would be a lot less common and even harder to take seriously.
A lot of these fringe things work like a kind of cargo cult. You'll see 'quantum' and 'electromagnetic' and other key words scattered liberally, but used in ways that prove the writers don't really know what they mean, and they're there just to give a kind of scientific veneer.
Which is a revealing thing to do, because the implication is that although science is primitive, etc, it's still secretly considered an ultimate authority on what goes in this part of the universe.
The crank element, I think, is a vocal minority. The new agers I've met have for the most part loved science (and would have brushed off reports of those aerials as cell phone towers).
This, and your description of Fear and uncertainty and Resentment just point to the conclusion that Science is just magic to most people. They incorporate it in their magical thinking, and they dislike science and scientists like they would dislike wizards and witches a thousand years ago.
Arthur C. Clarke's any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic is spot on. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
A lot of these fringe things work like a kind of cargo cult. You'll see 'quantum' and 'electromagnetic' and other key words scattered liberally, but used in ways that prove the writers don't really know what they mean, and they're there just to give a kind of scientific veneer. Which is a revealing thing to do, because the implication is that although science is primitive, etc, it's still secretly considered an ultimate authority on what goes in this part of the universe.
Hence the tables, graphs and maps prevalent in astrology. They were high tech when it was at it's peak. -----sapere aude
