Nasr, Seyyed Hossein

Hossein is one of the world's leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality, and a proponent of perennial philosophy. He is University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. Hossein was born in Tehran. After receiving his early education in Iran, Nasr studied physics and mathematics at MIT and received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1958 with specialization in Islamic cosmology and science. From 1958 until 1979, he was professor of the history of science and philosophy at Tehran University where he was also the dean of the Faculty of Letters for some years. He also served as president of Aryamehr University in Iran. He was the founder and first president of the Iranian Academy of Philosophy. In 1979, as a result of the revolution in Iran, he immigrated to the United States and taught at several American universities before finally joining George Washington University. In 1981, Nasr gave the Gifford lectures at the University of Edinburgh. In 1999 he was chosen to be the first Muslim scholar to receive the Templeton Religion and Science Course Award. Most recently, a volume on Nasr in the Library of Living Philosophers Series has been edited, which includes several studies on his views of science. He has written a number of books and articles on the relation between religion and science in general and Islam and science in particular. His doctoral dissertation, which appeared first in 1964 under the title An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, is the first modern book devoted to the study of Islamic cosmology. His next book Science and Civilization in Islam, published in 1968, brought the concept of ‘Islamic science’ to the fore. In this work, Nasr discussed the meaning of science within the context of Islamic religious worldview and analyzed the achievements of Islamic scientific tradition in such fields as medicine, astronomy, mathematics, algebra, chemistry, physics, geography, and natural history. Hossein has also been a pioneering figure on the relation between religion, science, and the environmental crisis. His early work The Encounter of Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, first appeared in 1968, was one of the first books to predict the disastrous consequences of the environmental crisis. The book is a philosophical critique of the modern conception of nature as inert matter to be conquered and usurped by modern science and technology. This is also the first book in which Nasr takes up the challenge of modern science and its secular outlook. In Religion and the Order of Nature, published in 1996, in which Nasr gives an account of the rise of modern science on the one hand, and the critique of secular and reductionist philosophies concerning nature, on the other. The book also attempts to revive the sacred notion of nature and traditional cosmology with which Nasr has been occupied throughout his intellectual career. As a prominent spokesman of the traditionalist school, Hossein has also dealt with science in its traditional and sacred sense. In this regard, Knowledge and the Sacred (1981) and The Need for a Sacred Science (1993) are the two most important books in which he has tried to revive scientia sacra by showing the underlying unity and interrelatedness of the transmitted, intellectual, and physical sciences under the umbrella of metaphysics. In his intellectual career, Hossein has dealt with all of the major aspects of the relation between religion and science. His contributions can be analyzed under two headings, namely the concept of Islamic science, which he has articulated almost single-handedly since the 1960s, and the critique of modern Western science. He defines Islamic science as the systematic study of natural phenomena within the context of the Islamic Weltanschauung, at the heart of which lies the doctrine of tawhid, Divine unity. For Nasr, tawhid has layers of meaning for spiritual, philosophical, and theological issues as well as for the cultivation of natural sciences. The underlying unity of the natural and human phenomena is taken to be an a priori metaphysical premise as everything issues forth from a single source, namely, the creative act of God. Thus Hossein presents a holistic view of the universe and a holistic epistemology for its scientific study. The second aspect of Hossein’s work on religion and science pertains to the critique of modern science. He has been one of the most outspoken critics of Western secular science and its effect on the non-Western world. Taking the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries to be a turning point in the history of Europe, Nasr focuses on the process of the gradual demise of Christian thought and the rise of the secular view of the universe, and argues that the rise of modern science is not the result of some groundbreaking discoveries in scientific measurement and instruments but rather of a radical change in the worldview of modern man that emerged in Europe after the 16th century. To substantiate this claim, Nasr identifies six dominant traits of modern science: The first is the secular view of the universe that sees no traces of the Divine in the natural order on the one hand, and denies any telos or purpose to the universe on the other. Consequently, the teleological view of the universe, shared by all traditional civilizations, is rejected by modern science. The second is the mechanization of the world-picture upon the model of machines and clocks? the favorite image of the deists of the 18th and 19th centuries. Since modern science and philosophy claim to explain everything away in terms of scientific and rational analysis, the universe had to be constructed as a machine so that it would lend itself to the precise methods of analysis and measurement of modern physical sciences. The third is rationalism and empiricism as the only reliable methods of arriving at truth. In spite of deep contradictions between the two, the secular and reductionist methods of philosophical analysis are shared by both schools. The fourth is the legacy of Cartesian dualism that presupposes a complete separation between res cogitans and res extensa, viz., between the knowing subject and the object to be known. One of the conspicuous results of this separation is the epistemological and spiritual alienation of man from his natural environment and, in fact, from everything that may become the object of his knowledge. The fifth is what he calls the "Promethean view of man", which construes man as the measure of all things, and which Nasr contrasts with what he calls the "Pontifical man", i.e., man as a bridge between heaven and earth. The last trait of modern secular science is the exploitation of nature as a source of power and domination, which was the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. Taken together, these six postulates constitute the philosophical framework of modern secular science, which has led to scientism and demise of the sacred view of the cosmos on the one hand, and to such modern disasters as the environmental crisis and nuclear warfare on the other. In so far as the relationship between religion and science is concerned, Hossein is opposed to the modernist-puritanical view that an ethical dimension grafted to the practice of science will undo the misdeeds of modern secular science. Instead of confining the role of religion and ethics to the level of policy decisions, he proposes a radical deconstruction of the philosophical foundations of modern science and attempts to revive the religious view of the universe. A sound metaphysical framework rooted in the perennial teachings of the great religions of the world is, for Nasr, a sine qua non for an authentic and veritable relationship between religion and science.