@LeviKornelsen Semi-related, but Alchemy becoming discredited is like this to me. Medieval alchemy was not just lead-into-gold / elixir-of-life stuff, but was basically proto-chemistry. This guy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Principe) has done a lot of work on translating alchemy into modern chemistry to prove that they weren't nonsense, so any of his books would be good material.
So I'm imagining a world where alchemy is not displaced and we have a more mystical & secretive form of the sciences.