After some soul searching, I've uploaded Olav Hammer's "Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age" after all; I've hesitated until now because of its exceedingly scholarly content. I haven't finished it yet but what has become disturbingly clear to me that ever since theosophy arose, spiritual seekers have time and again been taken in by esoteric authors who alternately denied the truth or legitimacy of scientific discoveries, pooh-poohed them as incomplete or short-sighted, selectively used some of them to corroborate their doctrines while conveniently ignoring others that may have disproved them, interpreting them in their own idiosyncratic way that would not stand up to academic scrutiny, etc., a phenomenon the author calls 'scientism'.
What has been so inordinately insidious about scientism (and these are my own musings now) is the use of scientific terms to explain away the inexplicable, for example Mesmer's 'animal magnetism' (no magnetism whatsoever involved), the chakra system being often likened to a network of pipelines (astral hydraulics?), all sorts of 'vibrations', 'wavelength' and 'frequencies' shaking up the aura, 'inner planes' designed to describe a 3D+ (and not a 2D system as implied), purely hypothetical constructs (e.g. tachyons or m-dimensional space) in order to go really medieval on consensus reality, or the stereotypical misapplication of quantum physics by esoteric authors that has become so painfully cringy by now.
Similarly, the energy model of magic unintentially entails the inherent limitations of the energy concept in physics and everyday thinking, so a given type of energy is willy-nilly thought to be finite (as if emanating from battery that runs empty over time and has to be recharged, or like a current that can get switched on or off), or certain phenomena being described as 'light' where no movement in a straight line from a single source is actually sensed, and the list goes on and on; the information model of magic that was intended to transcend the energy model seems to have fallen by the wayside new since the heyday of chaos magic.
Physics as we know it cannot explain supernatural phenomena (and yes, and that goes for quantum mechanics, too), in my opinion. Science-inspired analogies, on the other hand, are often misleading or put unnecessary limitations on occult thinking. My pet peeve is when authors try to underpin their claims by such scientific (and thus seemingly respectable) analogies - an analogy can only ever serve as an illustration but never as proof; whole occult books have been written based on that fallacy. "Ineffable phenomenon X is like Y, therefore…" and hey presto, the reader believes that the author has got a handle on things, what a genius. Bullshit. Call a theory a theory and an opinion an opinion but never attempt to prove a phenomenon by means of a facile analogy.
I think people are still afraid of the unknown and unknowable and clutch at straws as far as the occult is concerned. Nevertheless, we have made some progress in that we don't hang on the lips of occult star authors anymore claiming revelatory 'secret knowledge' and shrug it off as UPG, at least in forums like this one (for the most part, as exceptions like the continued popularity of Crowley's "Liber Al" demonstrate). I think we should pay more attention to the belief shifting theories of chaos magick and treat the doctrines of even the most celebrated occult authorities as mere opinions and never as gospels of truths.