Religion & the order of nature
By: Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 310
Subjects: Nature -- Religious aspects; Religion and science; Holy, The; Philosophy of nature; Environmental ethics; Human ecology -- Religious aspects
Other titles: Religion and the order of nature; Cadbury lectures
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
"The 1994 Cadbury lectures at the University of Birmingham."