I have been wondering about the mind-set of those who are drawn to rather fantastic and certainly scientifically unsupported explanations of phenomena. I'm not sure whether this mind-set is more widespread now or not. It does seem there is a great deal of it these days. I know that this mind-set retains an attitude that truth is hidden (literally, occult) from mainstream, scientific view; and that it is "revealed" somehow to self-trained "investigators" (and nearly no one else; it's good for book sales!).
I recall my excitement in the late 1960s to read Emmanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, which was widely read and finally discounted by scientists. My interest in it ended when it was attacked by them. That was good enough for me.
The question, then, that I am interested in concerns the mind-set of discounting science and believing what is unscientific. Why? What is this need about? Why distrust what science says? Is not the true history of the Sumerians, for example--as written by historians who use established methods of historiography--sufficiently wonderous? Is this a phenomenon that is more prevalent in the U.S.? Is it growing? If so, why?
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