In Western culture since the Industrial Revolution (after about 1760) , the idea grew that there was little connection between the objects in the world and the individual. Now this is not a history book so I will not go into the reasons behind this idea, but will merely mention that it was an overreaction, in your terms at least, to previous religious concepts.
Before that time man did believe that he could affect matter and the environment through his thoughts.
With the Industrial Revolution, however, even the elements of nature lost their living quality in man’s eyes. They became objects to be categorized, named, torn apart and examined. You do not dissect a pet cat or dog, so when man began to dissect the universe in those terms he had already lost his sense of love for it. It became soulless for him. Only then could he examine it, you see, without qualm, and without being aware of the living voice that protested; and so in his great fascination for what made things work, in his great curiosity to understand the heredity of a flower, say, he forgot what he could [also] learn by smelling a flower, looking at it, watching it be itself.
So he examined “dead nature.” Often he had to kill life in order, he thought, to discover its reality.
You cannot understand what makes things live when you must first rob their life. And so when man learned to categorize, number and dissect nature, he lost its living quality and no longer felt a part of it. To some important extent he denied his heritage, for spirit is born into nature and the soul, and for a time resides in flesh.
Man’s thoughts no longer seemed to have any effect upon nature because in his mind he saw himself apart from it. In an ambiguous fashion, while concentrating powers of his own mind. He became blind to the connection between his thoughts and his physical environment and experience.
Nature became then an adversary that he must control.
(The Nature of Personal Reality)
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