Another great post, thanks for this. Regarding the influence of "New Age" thought, I see it as a form of reality denial.

There are quite a few practitioners of New Age philosophy of one type or another around here, and their main refrain is "if you acknowledge or focus on negative things, you give them 'energy' and raise their 'frequency' [a very misunderstood concept in New Age thinking], and that will cause them to dominate your life". I cry BS to that and respond to them saying, "Then why are our bodies built with a pain mechanism?" Not only physical but also mental pain. It is a feedback mechanism to let us know something is not right (i.e. healthy) and needs our attention so we can take corrective action. What usually happens when you ignore pain? Doesn't it usually get worse rather than better?

On the other hand, many new age practitioners embrace technologies such as Radionics (often without the slightest understanding of it), and as one who has studied that domain of research (and other examples of knowledge suppression) I find there is a fuzzy zone of knowledge which is difficult to qualify as "truth" or fiction. To say that unless a concept is scientifically proven to be true it must be false is indeed true by definition, but often such statements are made as never changing, absolute statements of truth from arrogance and that rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps that's a reflection of being very open minded. Since no human possesses 100% of all knowledge absolute statements are a bit of a problem to me. We all know of things once thought to be impossible which are now common place, such as human flight, instantaneous communication over vast distances without wires, etc etc. That said, it is practical and useful to label things as "true" or "impossible", tho the strength of such general statements are superficial. Definitions do matter. How do you define reality and acknowledge your knowledge is finite?

As for the radionics example, I've noticed that most of the frequencies used by the majority of radionics machines lie within the audio range of the electromagnetic spectrum. It would take a tremendous amount of effort to devise experiments in a proper scientific manor to isolate the large number of variables involved with how human vocalizations might affect our bodies similarly to how a radionics machine does.

I've written elsewhere about this "fuzzy zone", the frontier of knowledge, that lies between scientifically provable truth and theoretical, speculative concepts that (as yet) remain unproven. That is the realm research is done in. It should be noted that many discoveries occur as a by product of looking into some other facet of a problem, and the discovery is serendipitous. To conduct research randomly, ignoring evidence is hardly an efficient way to learn. Efficiency of the investigation and analysis of experimental results is far easier and more coherent if the context is grounded in evidence, is grounded in what we refer to as "reality". Being too grounded in reality as opposed to possibilities is how I define stubbornness or close-mindedness.