Modernism has its background in theosophy. Understandably, adherents today are not keen to talk about this. Modernism has a heroic tale of its own. It seems obvious which characters should have the longest chapters: Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, the two who laid the foundation for the scientific worldview; Immanuel Kant, who liberated humankind from its self-inflicted helplessness; Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, who freed humankind from theology and gave them their own history; and Albert Einstein, who reunited cosmology and physics.

And now the heroic tale continues towards an ever-open ending in the hope that new heroes will come forth, ready to uphold the supremacy of science over the conditions of existence. But are there likewise fallen heroes, ones that seemed to have opened up new fields of science at least during part of their lives before being repudiated or at least half forgotten? Indeed there are, and they are numerous. Franz Xaver Mesmer was on...