As a concept, Mind Physics made its cultural debut at the end of the 19th Century. It was part of the reaction to the scientific-materialist world-view that was in flower at the time. As a world-view, it was based on a sensory - dependent model of science which declared that consciousness is produced by mass and its various systems, and not the traditional view of science held by the medieval alchemists who believed consciousness was transmitted by mass. Or in their terms: matter could act as or provide the circumstances of epiphanies of spirit.
It was not so much the dismissal of the alchemists' way of thinking that lead to the success of Scientism, but the Industrial Revolution and its proponents that saw in Scientism a potential apologist for its program of continual progress by means of a plethora of superhuman scaled machine products.