Religion and the Order of Nature / Edition 1

by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Overview

The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. In this book, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely that nature is sacred.

Nasr traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, Nasr shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, he argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and cooperate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195108231
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/26/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	9.19(w) x 6.08(h) x 0.86(d)
Lexile:	1840L (what's this?)

About the Author

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is University Professor of Islam Studies at George Washington University.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
1	Religion and Religions	9
2	The Order of Nature	29
3	Philosophy and the Misdeeds of Philosophy	80
4	The Traditional Sciences, the Scientific Revolution, and Its Aftermath	126
5	The Tragic Consequences of Humanism in the West	163
6	The Rediscovery of Nature: Religion and the Environmental Crisis	191
7	The Wisdom of the Body	235
8	Religion and the Resacralization of Nature	270
	Index	293

Editorial Reviews

"The most comprehensive and intelligent treatment of its topic that has been written....Nasr is one of the major intellects of our day."—Huston Smith, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher