I am not attacking the ontology of contemporary physics, but am instead interested in how a particular historical image of physics came to imprint the human sciences, and by doing so, spilled over into the master description of modernity as such, even as the physicists themselves were often pushing against that model from the inside.

According to thinkers like Taylor, part of the way that religion lost its grip on the modern subject was through science eliminating the supernatural.

it is still widely supposed that the defining feature of modernity is the departure of the supernatural. Modernization is often equated with the rise of instrumental reason, the gradual alienation of humanity from nature, and the production of a bureaucratic and technological life world stripped of mystery and wonder.

A PHILOSOPHICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD

The single most familiar story in the history of science is the tale of disenchantment—of magic’s exit from the henceforth law-governed world. I am here to tell you that as broad cultural history, this narrative is wrong.

Curie’s presence at a spiritualist séance is a problem because a great many theorists have argued that one of the things that most makes the modern world modern is the rejection of animism—basically, that we have eliminated ghosts, demons, and spirits from the contemporary worldview.