Religion and the Order of Nature

Abstract

Even by his own exceptional standards, this new book by Seyyed HosseinNasr is a remarkable work destined to be a classic in the field of religious studiesof nature. Professor Nasr brings together a breath-taking depth of knowledgein a single volume-he covers the fields of metaphysics and comparative religion,traditional cosmology and modem philosophies of nature, as well as thehistory of science and the rise of secularism and humanism. The book is especiallyrelevant to this issue, which is dedicated to economics as applied ethics,for Professor Nasr argues that the environmental crisis is an external reflectionof modem man’s spiritual crisis. While others naively believe that a more cleveruse of technology will avert the impending environmental calamity, ProfessorNasr demonstrates that what really needs to be addressed and remedied is modemman’s misguided search for the infinite in a finite world. Rather than satisfyinghis yearning through religion and spirituality which leads to the Infinite,modern man pursues material objects in an external world divorced from itsspiritual significance as a sign of God. The result is internal dissatisfaction, givingrise to insatiable appetites and the environmental crisis. While ProfessorNasr documents this work with a wealth of data and detail, the reader is neverallowed to lose sight of the essential. As one of his admiring readers noted, “Thebook has the form of academic research but the substance of metaphysicalinsight; the penetrating acuity of the logician is combined with the spiritual sensibilityof the contemplative.”For Professor Nasr, the contemplative appreciation of the world of nature isessential to avert an environmental catastrophe and does not detract from objectivescience, rather it is a fulfillment of it. Indeed, the intelligence is objective tothe extent that it accurately registers, not only that which is, but also all that is.In this sense, true objectivity requires one to know things as they are in divinis,corresponding to the hadith of the Prophet in which he asks God to show usthings as they really are. Objectivity does not consist in denying the qualitativedimension of nature as symbols leading man to God, and taking its quantitativedimension to be the only reality. Professor Nasr relates this incomprehension ofthe spiritual significance of nature to the environmental crisis and denial ofman’s spiritual needs. He points out that this quantitative approach is to take apart to be the whole, and is evidence of partiality rather than objectivity. Forthose who recognize that the current environmental crisis cannot be understood,much less solved, without a wider spiritual approach, Professor Nasr’s book willbe both enlightening and a source of consolation.Based on his 1994 Cadbury Lectures delivered at the University ofBirmingham, England, this book complements an earlier classic, Knowledgeand the Sacred. Whereas his earlier book focused on the desacralization ofknowledge in the modem West, his new book is concerned with the desacralizationof nature. At the root of both errors is an attitude which creates an internalworld of reason cut off from both the intellect and Revelation, and an externalworld cut off from its spiritual significance as a sign from God ...