Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man

by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

This is a spiritual tour de force which explores the relationship between Man and Nature as found in Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, particularly its Sufi dimension.

Genres: Philosophy, Islam, Religion, Spirituality, Nonfiction, Theology, Faith

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born on April 7, 1933 (19 Farvadin 1312 A.H. solar) in Tehran into a family of distinguished scholars and physicians. His father, Seyyed Valiallah, a man of great learning and piety, was a physician to the Iranian royal family, as was his father before him. The name "Nasr" which means "victory" was conferred on Professor Nasr's grandfather by the King of Persia. Nasr also comes from a family of Sufis. One of his ancestors was Mulla Seyyed Muhammad Taqi Poshtmashhad, who was a famous saint of Kashan, and his mausoleum which is located next to the tomb of the Safavid king Shah Abbas, is still visited by pilgrims to this day.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, Washington D.C. is one of the most important and foremost scholars of Islamic, Religious and Comparative Studies in the world today. Author of over fifty books and five hundred articles which have been translated into several major Islamic, European and Asian languages, Professor Nasr is a well known and highly respected intellectual figure both in the West and the Islamic world. An eloquent speaker with a charismatic presence, Nasr is a much sought after speaker at academic conferences and seminars, university and public lectures and also radio and television programs in his area of expertise. Possessor of an impressive academic and intellectual record, his career as a teacher and scholar spans over four decades.

Professor Nasr began his illustrious teaching career in 1955 when he was still a young and promising, doctoral student at Harvard University. Over the years, he has taught and trained an innumerable number of students who have come from the different parts of the world, and many of whom have become important and prominent scholars in their fields of study.

He has trained different generations of students over the years since 1958 when he was a professor at Tehran University and then, in America since the Iranian revolution in 1979, specifically at Temple University in Philadelphia from 1979 to 1984 and at the George Washington University since 1984 to the present day. The range of subjects and areas of study which Professor Nasr has involved and engaged himself with in his academic career and intellectual life are immense. As demonstrated by his numerous writings, lectures and speeches, Professor Nasr speaks and writes with great authority on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from philosophy to religion to spirituality, to music and art and architecture, to science and literature, to civilizational dialogues and the natural environment.

For Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the quest for knowledge, specifically knowledge which enables man to understand the true nature of things and which furthermore, "liberates and delivers him from the fetters and limitations of earthly existence," has been and continues to be the central concern and determinant of his intellectual life.

Reviews

[Murtaza]

This is a short set of essays by Nasr offering a critique of modern science and the project of destruction that it has wrought against the natural world. Nasr's critique essentially revolves around the divorce between science and metaphysics, which has unmoored otherwise legitimate scientific endeavor from its base in a meaningful higher knowledge. As a result it has actually become dangerous and illegitimate, waging a ceaseless war against a disenchanted natural world. The external world has thus come to be a reflection of the same disharmony that has been created within modern man, who has lost his metaphysical foundations and accompanying sense of purpose and place.

This book would've probably been more revelatory to me had I read it many years ago, but its arguments are nonetheless poignant. Nature is not a brute machine to exploit to satisfy the wants of man, as the thinkers of the Renaissance would have it. Instead nature is a window to the divine, which is reflected in signs and symbols, at least for those who have not yet been made deaf to them:

"And He has subjected to you, as from Him, all that is in the heavens and on earth: behold in that are Signs indeed for those who reflect."

Nasr's debt to Perennial philosophy comes across strongly in this book, much of which deals with Christianity, Hinduism and even Taoism alongside his own Islamic beliefs. There has been a remarkable consistency among traditional peoples about the ultimate value of nature and how and why to live in harmony with it. The modern idea that human beings are the only Absolute means that nature and all it contains are thus contingent, ultimately made for our enjoyment and exploitation.

Today we are becoming alarmed that we have exploited nature so much we no longer may be able to enjoy it. If, as Nasr argues, we had subordinated the scientific process to its rightful place in the hierarchy of knowledge we would not be presently staring into the abyss that we are. Not only would nature be in a healthy equilibrium, we ourselves would not be feeling the anguish of having waged a war against the natural world and our own heedless souls in the process. We can no longer even hear nature or see its divine signs and messages to us, as we have been rendered insensible by the sound and fury of our own activity.

Given that this book was released many decades ago, its clear that the ideas it contains never succeeded in creating a decisive cultural shift. Nasr's way of expressing himself is a bit flighty - he's a better speaker than writer - but its too bad that people didn't heed his and others warnings about where the world was headed due to the scientific-industrial project of destruction, as Wael Hallaq has described it.

A related speech by the late Native American leader Russell Means, one of my favorite addresses ever, echoes many of Nasr's points in this book, even more succinctly: https://www.filmsforaction.org/news/r...

[Shaimaa Ali]

الإنسان والطبيعة

يأخذنا المؤلف بروفيسور (سيد حسين نصر) في رحلة بين الطاوية ، الهندوسية،البوذية والأديان الإبراهيمية الثلاث لعرض العلاقة بين الإنسان والطبيعة … وهو أحد أهم معالم الفلسفة الخالدة: Perennials Philosophy
بينما لم أفهم كثيراً ما قالته الأديان الشرقية من بحوث وأفكار ، كانت الأديان الإبراهيمية الأقرب إلى فهمي وأوضح. فالإسلام تعرض لهذه العلاقة كثيراً لرؤيته أن غاية وجود الإنسان على الأرض هي السعي إلى المعرفة الكلية للأشياء والوصول إلى وضع (الإنسان الكامل) كتجلي لصورة الإنسان الحقة الساعية إلى الكمال الإلهي (وفي هذا أود قراءة كتاب الجيلي بنفس العنوان). أيضاً في العهد القديم كانت توجد إشارات لهذه العلاقة كما في قيام نبي الله نوح بأخذ زوج من الكائنات في سفينته …
وجدت أيضاً أن الكاتب يتخذ موقفاً متزناً بين العلم الحديث والعقلانية الباردة الذين دمرا كل شيء في علاقة الإنسان بالطبيعة - ومن ثم ربه - وبين الخيال والأوهام. فهو يرى ضرورة تمكن علم الميتافيزيقا لإعادة إكتشاف الإنسان للطبيعة مقتبساً مقولات لدارس الفلسفة الخالدة الأشهر ( F.Schuon) الذي يقول:
" إن الطبيعة البكر هي الفقر المقدس وهي أيضاً طفولة روحية، وهي كتاب مفتوح ينطوي على تعاليم لا تنفد للحق والجمال، والإنسان الغرق في أشيائه يصبح قابلاً للفساد بسهولة، فالأشياء تجعله فاسداً وخارجاً عن الدين، أما في الطبيعة التي لا تعرف قلقاً ولا زيفاً، فإنه يتمنى أن يظل متأملاً كالطبيعة ذاتها، فهي طبيعة أقرب إلى الرب بكليتها، والذي بيده الكلمة الاخيرة" - من كتاب (أضواء على العوالم القديمة)

الشكر الحقيقي لدار آفاق والمترجم المتميز : عمر نور الدين في تقديم أعمال د. نصر إلى قراء العربية.

[Farhad]

Some of my favourite passages:

"Man sees in nature what he is himself and penetrates into the inner meaning of nature only on the condition of being able to delve into the inner depths of his own being and to cease to lie merely on the periphery of his being. Men who live only on the surface of their being can study nature as something to be manipulated and dominated. But only he who has turned toward the inner dimension of his being can see nature as a symbol, as a transparent reality and come to know and understand it in the real sense."

"It is indeed curious that in the modern world, where everything is criticized and questioned, where there are critics of art, of literature, of politics, of philosophy, and even of religion there are no critics of science."

"...for to seek to discover the truth in any matter is the most constructive of all acts."

"In the end what we can say with all certainty is that there is no peace possible among men unless there is peace and harmony with nature. And in order to have peace and harmony with nature one must be in harmony and equilibrium with Heaven, and ultimately with the Source and Origin of all things"

[J.D. Steens]

Nasr attributes the modern environmental “crisis” to the desacralization of nature, that began early in the West with the rise of science. Before then, nature was seen as the manifestation of the Universal Intellect, an Absolute presence that provided certainty, predictability and ordered harmony. Science, he says, “emptied the cosmos of its sacred character.” In doing so, man saw nature not as a reflection of Intelligent Mind or of God’s reality but as a thing for man to use, resulting in the inevitable abuse of nature and “a veritable crime against creation.”

In this desacralization process man moved away from the “real.” Nature was “reduced to quantity,” but “lost its tripartite structure of spirit, soul and body,” and thereby transformed “the higher to the lower.” Man moved from “half angel” to “a totally earth-bound creature,” but gained liberty “at the expense of losing his freedom to transcend his terrestrial limitations.” This all points to Nasr’s solution to not just have a relationship with nature but with the cosmos itself. Though he does not mention Plato at all, Nasr is working within a Platonic theological-philosophical framework. “Real” is not our world. It is the world of Plato’s Forms. The body, the “earthbound creature,” is secondary to the soul that ascends to Real Knowledge and Transcendent Truth. Nature – our material world – is a reflection and creation of this world beyond. “The whole of nature,” Nasr writes, “speaks of God.”

And now we get to the meat of Nasr’s critique of Western science. That science merely describes what has been put there by the Universal, Transcendent Mind. Modern science needs to be integrated into this larger realm of “metaphysical science” and “metaphysical knowledge” so that its findings can be properly interpreted, evaluated and critiqued. Newton and Einstein’s findings are only about “quantification.” They are not “qualitative” and therefore cannot connect “each being ontologically to its source” and, thereby, “to show exactly what they mean.” In doing so, Nasr hints (writing in code?) that time stops and space is one, eternal place. Nasr calls biological evolution “fashionable” “dogma.” “It’s not a scientific theory because it contradicts the “archetypal reality of species.” “Like other things,” he writes, “the species is an ‘idea’ whose imprint in material form does not confine and exhaust its essential reality which remains independent of matter. A species could not evolve into another because each species is an independent reality qualitatively different from another.” By reinterpretation of such scientific findings in this way, it’s hard to envision that our relationship with nature will be improved upon. He’s rebuilding his house on a foundation of sand.

Nasr is stuck in time. He denies the senses as the highest source of truth because he operates from a higher plain of reality. His metaphysical science and its absolute truth has been usurped by modern science, which sees itself as the arbiter of the real when it is but a reflection of the Real. Nasr puts a stake in the ground to reclaim his territory. He wants absolute time and space, not the absolutes of process and flux. He wants us to go backwards to experience cosmic majesty even when modern science, daily, touches on unfathomable, magnificent mysteries. Why there is such a fundamental split in ways of seeing the world is an interesting question.

[Soroush]

This book by Seyyed Hossein Nasr consists of four chapters based on his lectures delivered at the University of Chicago in 1966. Although it has been written decades ago, most of its content can be applied to today's environmental crisis. In other words, when you read this book, you wouldn't think, for the most part, that it is based on lectures given decades ago. His overall objective in this book is to show that to solve our environmental problems, we need to revive our metaphysical and spiritual understanding of nature. Subsequently, we should place ourselves in the bigger cosmological picture and instead of trying to dominate nature, work with nature and attain harmony with it. Nasr draws a historical line to show how we got to where we are now; how we gradually lost our metaphysical and spiritual understanding of nature and its significance in the cosmological picture. He emphasizes on the existence of a hierarchy of knowledge based on the existence of a hierarchy of reality. Material and physical understanding of nature covers only one plane of existence, and for him, we must advance vertically instead of horizontally to be able to bridge our material understanding of the world with the overall metaphysical reality of it.
This book isn't a scientific book. If you are used to reading science books with academic citations and references to scientific journals or investigations, you will most likely find this book lacking. This book is meant to make you curious to look for a different perspective or approach to reality. It is a relatively small book, so its effectiveness is questionable and depends on how receptive you already are to such ideas.
If you do choose to read this book, in my opinion, start from the second chapter. First chapter is a survey chapter, which may be quite frustrating to read and follow. Once you're finished with the book, then you can come back and read the first chapter to choose your next step, if you wish to follow up on some of the issues mentioned in the book. Chapter four seems to be a bit too repetitive, and unfortunately, in chapter four he writes against the theory of evolution to strengthen his points. Nowadays, what he wrote against evolution, may backfire against him. But perhaps to be charitable, more people used to be against the theory of evolution in 1966 than today. Chapters two and three are quite good. In these chapters some important points are raised that deserve to be examined and contemplated upon.
In a nutshell, if you're quite concerned about the current environmental crisis, as I think we should all be, and you want a very different perspective on the cause of it and the solution for it, then this book may provide you with what you are looking for; that is if you're receptive and open to ideas of metaphysics and spirituality.

[عزام الشثري]

وظيفة الثورة العلمية بتعبير فرانسيس بيكون: ضرورة السيطرة على الطبيعة وإجبارها على البوح بأسرارها لا من أجل تمجيد الرب بل من أجل التحكم في العالم والثروة، فجرى النظر للطبيعة كشيء للاستعمال والمتعة بأقصى قدر، لا كشاكلة متزوجة يتمتع بها الزوج ويكون مسؤولا عنها، بل صارت الطبيعة عند الإنسان الحديث بغيّ يستمتع بها بلا مسؤولية تجاهها، ونظرا لانعدام وجود أي بعد استبطاني، اتجهت جهود المهتمين بقضايا البيئة إلى نوع من الهندسة البيئية، وكأن تغيير وسائل النقل وحصر الوقود في إنتاج الطاقة سوف يحل المشكلة أو يخففها على الأقل، بدل سؤال لماذا هذا الاستهلاك المفرط لكل شيء

[Matt]

This series of four essays by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, first published in 1967, gives a remarkably far-sighted and astute account of the spiritual roots of the manmade oecological crisis. In this series, he sees at the root of the modern hard sciences a fundamental urge to grasp nature, to master, conquer and control it. On the other hand, Dr Nasr worries that the religious tradition of Western Christianity is not putting up enough of a fight against the exploitation and destruction of the natural world, and is thus ceding ground among the oecologically-conscious to spiritually-destructive New Age hokum. He believes very much that Western Christendom can and should rediscover its tradition of finding the sacred within nature.

The urge for conquest of nature, in Nasr's view, originates in the nominalist turn in Western philosophy, which sought to empty the sciences of their metaphysical content and religious meaning. In this, Nasr seems to have anticipated John Milbank's critique of social theory. Though it may somewhat irk Milbank that a Muslim religious philosopher could critique nominalism in much the same way he does, their themes are nevertheless remarkably similar, and indeed he ascribes the blame to some of the same historical actors (notably William of Ockham).

Of interest to me was how highly Nasr spoke of the Greek Church Fathers whose thought had ramifications for environmental awareness: the saints Irenaeus of Lyons, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian and Maximus the Confessor in particular. It's not a coincidence that these major church figures were also some of the most metaphysical thinkers of the Orthodox tradition!

If I have one gripe with the book, it would be this: his understanding of particularly evolutionary biology is somewhat simplistic and out-of-date. The neo-Darwinists he rightfully critiques are, at best, one voice among many in that branch of science; and the process-philosophical followers of Alfred North Whitehead (whom Nasr cites favourably at several points) have gained some ground in this field, though perhaps not nearly enough. Nasr also has a remarkable detestation for the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, but from what I understand that goes somewhat hand-in-glove with his antipathy to the neo-Darwinists. But while evolutionary metaphors are egregious and noxious in other fields, particularly where they take on the shades of Herbert Spencer's cruel anthropology, that doesn't necessarily amount to a solid critique of biological evolution per se. Indeed, one would think that a set of observations noting the fundamental dependence of biological life on the elements of virgin nature, and the interdependence of life and the elements across many generations, properly contextualised, would be a major to Dr Nasr's metaphysical-religious frame of mind!

However, Dr Nasr's punchline is still dead-on. We need a new metaphysics - or rather, we need a new birth of interest in the old metaphysics. Only once we understand that nature is translucent and pregnant with the energies of the Divine, and exists to be awed rather than dissected, cut up, mechanised and exploited, can we begin to fundamentally reorient ourselves to nature.

[Tara]

The author made many points I agreed with. He was insightful, he drew together some arguments which I found provocative and inspiring. Nonetheless, the book was tinged with a sexism I found repugnant, and it repeated itself in a dead sort of way. Considering that he was defending life and nature, he was terribly dry. I love John Scotus Erigena and many of the other people he talked about, but his analysis was too shallow and a result of his own biases. Still, there is definitely something to be gained from this book, especially for those of the scientific mind-set who prostrate themselves before technology without setting it in the broader context of life. I just think other people have said it better.

[Harooon]

We are living through a mass extinction of the world’s plants and animals. As the climate warms, seasons, storms, and floods become more unstable and destructive. Though nature is under threat from human activity, this is not a process that can continue unabated: man cannot “continue to conquer and dominate” without a “reaction on the part of nature to re-establish the equilibrium destroyed by man.” (119) At the root of the issue, argues Seyyed Hossein Nasr, is a moral and spiritual crisis. We have given up trying to understand nature, and no longer attempt to locate ourselves within it. Man and Nature is an attempt to correct the record.

The first thing to point out about this book is that it engages with multiple senses of the word “nature”. One sense of the word is the natural world—plants, animals, and trees—along with the knowledge we obtain by observing its forms, behaviours, and habitats. In a broader sense we may also talk about the laws of nature, such as those of physics and chemistry. Another entirely different sense of the word is that impression of sublime beauty and inspiration contained in the art of the 19th century Romantics: think Caspar David Friedrich’s wanderer above a sea of fog.

Different senses of the word may be valuable in their own right—they may even inform an ethos of care for the natural world—but they do not exhaust our knowledge of nature as a whole. They all have their own limitations. The Romantics may have increased our appreciation for wildernesses, but their point-of-view was ultimately tethered to a particular feeling at a specific moment in history, a mourning for the last few forests and mountains untouched by Europe's industrial revolution. Modern science, on the other hand, restricts itself to only those phenomena described by empirical measurements and mathematical models. Such quantitative knowledge is but one aspect of nature:

It is not true to say that the sun is only incandescent gas, although this is an aspect of its reality. It is also as true to say that the sun is a symbol of the intelligible principle in the Universe and this element is as much an aspect of its ontological reality as the physical features discovered by modern astronomy. (120)

Describing the sun as a “symbol” of the universe’s intelligibility is a curiously poetic choice. The word “symbol” today means an arbitrary sign or word that designates or connotes something else; a “symbolic meaning” is a meaning implied—thus contestable—as opposed to one that is literally found or intended. But in an older meaning of the word, a “symbol” is anything which participates in or reveals a deeper level of meaning, with the link between the two being essential and inherent, not arbitrary or accidental.

Nasr’s description of the sun echoes the analogy found in Plato’s Republic. When Socrates is asked what goodness is, he admits that he cannot say anything specific about it, so he simply compares it to the sun. Just as the sun illuminates the world with light, rendering it visible to the human eye, goodness illuminates the world with truth, rendering it intelligible to the human mind. If we think of the sun as a symbol participating in a deeper meaning, Plato’s analogy is not just a convenient literary device for thinking about how truth and goodness give meaning to our lives, it is an observation that light and truth are both manifestations of the order and structure of existence.

Symbols and symbolic meanings are important because some aspects of reality can only be understood in this way. The main example is God. Being greater than all words and concepts, He cannot be fully expressed or understood through representative language—yet He is immanent in reality, and can be apprehended as He is disclosed in the various parts of creation. It is thus written in the Quran: “Wherever we turn is the face of God.” (Al-Baqqarah 115). If we are to care for nature in its fullest, we must revive symbolic, qualitative understandings of it by contemplating creation as a whole.

To underline the different kind of world-view needed to sustain this other-worldly contemplation, Nasr often contrasts “traditional man” with “modern man”. Traditional man is educated in a particular system of metaphysics. He sees in nature various indications and manifestations of a cosmos in which he is a direct participant. Every strand and tendency and event in his life is ultimately reconciled and unified in its common spiritual origin. Modern man, meanwhile, denies the possibility that metaphysical speculation can ever be useful or meaningful. He does not believe in any systematic inquiry of reality that is not in some way grounded in science or mathematics.

As a perennialist, Nasr is not so much concerned with the exact system of metaphysics into which one is inducted. Intellection discerns what is already there, so different religious traditions can participate—to varying degrees of accuracy—in the same sacred body of truths. “Metaphysical intuition can occur anywhere... but the effective realization of metaphysical truth and its application to human life can only be achieved within a revealed tradition which gives efficacy to certain symbols and rites upon which metaphysics must rely for its realization.” (81) In other words, it is more important to have a common fund of symbols—and a common metaphysical vocabulary—so we can meaningfully speak about reality together. Nasr himself is a Shia muslim with Sufi leanings, but he also takes inspiration from understandings of nature drawn from Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity, and other religions.

If a mistaken premise sits at the heart of modernity that nature can only be understood through quantitative methods, it is necessary to go back to the genesis of that idea in order to correct it. Nasr believes this happened sometime around the Renaissance. When the works of the Ancient Greeks were re-introduced to Christian Europe via the Arab peripatetics, a general metaphysical scepticism supplanted existing theologies of illumination and contemplation. Christianity, emphasising the path to God as a way of love, began to elevate man’s will above his intellect: correct knowledge about God and his creation was less important than the actual act of faith in Him. The unique conditions for the emergence of modern science had arrived, but it would take several centuries yet before cosmology was totally emptied of its symbolic meanings—a process Nasr calls “the secularization of science”—and replaced with a “purely terrestrial physics”. Cartesian philosophy later argued that mind and matter were sovereign in their own right, each incapable of influencing the other, thus decoupling metaphysics from science altogether. Much later, idealism and evolution supplied theories of change that explained the forms and variations of the world in terms of temporal and biological operations, rather than the essential characteristics given to them by God.

The first step in correcting the mistake is to once more recognise and contemplate a reality beyond the purely material. The resulting body of knowledge—a cosmological science—would once more permit the systematic inquiry of nature in its fullest. It would also be necessary to revive the critical judgements proper to philosophy, so standards may be created according to which the fruits of different domains—whether physics or biology or politics or metaphysics—may be judged and integrated into a single hierarchy of knowledge.

It’s certainly an ambitious programme, and Nasr doesn’t give a specific starting point. Man and Nature is written in such a way as to imply that any tradition could be a starting point. Yet a rigorous cosmology must eventually grapple with the contradictions between traditions. To take but one example, the trinity of Christianity asserts that God exists in three persons, while the tawhid of Islam asserts that God is exactly one and indivisible. If we are trying to suspend our (dis)belief in two traditions to better evaluate them, which standards are appropriate for negotiating the conflict? My response will likely betray my secular Christian heritage. You must appeal to the actual facts of history, in which specific figures claimed divine origin or inspiration, and try to ascertain whether or not they were telling porkies. At the same time, you must also reconcile in their words your own experience of truth and goodness. In other words, you must perform an act of faith.

Theology aside, it’s important to step back and acknowledge in all of this the risk of meandering metaphysical maundering. This review, like Nasr’s book, is almost entirely about the conditions under which knowledge about nature can be obtained. Very little is said about nature itself. Responding to the crisis of nature by first resolving all metaphysical presuppositions about the natural in a definitive hierarchy of knowledge is such a grandiose move that it almost refutes itself by its own cumbersome impracticality. Anything can be solved with an appeal to objective truth; the hard part is obtaining the initial, imperfect, uncertain, incomplete insight in the first place. If romanticism and science have limited conceptions of nature, so does metaphysics.

I am therefore not entirely in agreement with Nasr’s criticisms of science vis-à-vis his criticisms of quantitative knowledge. An empirical or mathematical fact may not, by itself, admit a deeper reality—which we would ignore anyway for the purpose of making the numbers add up. But facts don’t just occur in isolation. They co-occur and they suggest each other, and when accumulated across many domains a picture emerges in which reality seems to have an inherent structure. We don’t just make up laws of physics for fun, we also believe in them because they have a correspondence to the way things really are. This inexplicable correspondence has to me always been the most persuasive argument for religion in its broadest sense. Literal knowledge of the quantitative aspects of something may well be a pre-condition to any meaningful knowledge of its qualitative or symbolic aspects. In any case, we need to appeal to physical phenomena to ground our isolated and conflicting experiences, lest we fall into a kind of relativism across which nothing meaningful may be communicated.

So how do we begin to care for nature? As I write this, my son is asleep on my chest, so a comparison suggests itself. Caring for nature is like caring for a baby. Talking to the old folks or reading a book about it might help a little bit. Tracing the whakapapa of a forest or foundling back to the world of light—that genealogical method which Nasr is so fond of—may convince you of the gravity of your task. But you ultimately just have to look at your baby and listen to him. You give him your full attention. You recognise his various sounds and movements. You differentiate his cries. You learn what calms him down and helps him go to sleep. I don’t mean any of this in a rigorous, scientific kind of way. I simply mean that caring for a baby involves looking at and attending to him with all your heart, and adjusting your reality to the fact of his reality.

Why should nature be any different? Contemplation of the natural world is also a revelation. The main obstacle to this activity is the fact that most people live thoroughly de-natured lives. Every decade I seem to have fewer and fewer reasons to go outside. Cities sprawl and swallow up the surrounding forests, fields, and waterways. Nature is something distant and theoretical, more of a nostalgic ideal than anything connected to a person’s actual senses and memories. Caring for it must start with reifying that idea in many small, often pointless observations. Noting the passage of seasons and feeling the heat or the cold. Waking on a frigid morning to grass stiffened by hoarfrost. Watching birds scratch around in the leaf-litter, and learning their names and those specific trees they like to visit. Counting the rings on a tree-stump to guess its age. Remarking on the sorts of weeds that seem to flourish in the cracks of the footpath, no matter how tiny the gap. Visiting remnants of old forest, and reading about how the land used to be before there were people on it. Learning the former paths of rivers and wetlands, and how they were dammed and straightened and drained and polluted. Planting trees and flowers, and watching how they sustain the indigenous fauna that co-evolved with them over millions of years. Affected by the knowledge of many small things, you make different decisions about how you live your life, to nature’s benefit as well as your own.

Such tiny stirrings and intuitions may not lead us to a comprehensive picture of reality. Do they need to? Often, the very specificity and limitedness of a small wonder is what gives it sway over human behaviour. No-one embodied that style of thinking better than the late poet Wendell Berry, on whose words I end this review:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

[Nick Burdick]

Nasr’s thesis is that we have separated the sciences of the material world from a metaphysical (spiritual) understanding, and in the process, we’ve lost our connection to nature and replaced harmony with domination. Science is useful, he says, but the nature of its methods, such as its reliance on measurable experiments, limits its effectiveness to the measurable world. Absent are immeasurable qualities such as goodness and beauty. It’s a compelling thesis that he supports with a mix of good and bad logic.

Nasr is at his best when he traces the historical causes of the split from Aristotle up through modern times (1970s) in chapter 2, and when he compares and contrasts the metaphysical principles of the major religions in chapter 3. There are illuminating and convincing arguments about knowledge that transcends science in these chapters.

He’s at his worst in chapter four, where he attempts to demonstrate that the presuppositions of science are at question if not accompanied by a healthy metaphysical philosophy. He uses Darwinian evolution as his example, and rather than prove his point, he instead makes it clear that he does not have a solid grasp of evolutionary theory. His underlying point may still be valid, but he does himself no favors here. In the same chapter, he argues over and over that metaphysics should serve as judge and critic of science, to determine what is useful and what is valid. I tried hard to find a possible application of that assertion that didn’t sound odious and nonsensical, but I failed.

Still, there are some good ideas here. If you’re looking for wilderness writing, this is not the book for you. But if you’re looking for philosophy, you have a skeptical mind, and you don’t mind that there’s very little nature in here, there are some good ideas that are worth thinking about.

[Maryam]

A lot of this text is outdated but it's interesting to look back at how a field of study began/ contributed to where we are now. Nasr is often thought of as the first to bring climate action informed by Islamic knowledge to Western academia so I read it expecting a stronger presence of traditional knowledge and distance from Western thought. But after reading it I see how he may have been forced to err on the side of neutrality (aka Western/Christian) to ensure readership which is interesting because it's exactly what he warns against.

“Men who live only on the surface of their being can study nature as something to be manipulated and dominated. But only he who has turned toward the inward dimension of his being can see nature as a symbol, as a transparent reality and come to know and understand it in the real sense” (p. 96-97).

[Sharaiz]

A very important book that looks to provide a deeper metaphysical understanding for how the spiritual crisis in modern man has created the climate crisis and destruction of nature/humanity we see today. Even though it was first written in the 1980s, this book continues to hold relevance today.

Only negative points are first that it is quite a difficult book to follow and assumes an understanding of a wide range of topics, from science to theology. Secondly, Nasr mentions Native Americans as having the most important lessons for modern man to learn from in regards to nature but does not expand on this in any detail. Despite this, the book is certainly a fresh perspective on a very important contemporary issue.

[Ahmet Bakir Sbaai]

يدافع الفيلسوف الإيراني سيد حسين نصر عن التصور الروحي للطبيعة مقدما نقدا قويا للحداثة وما بعدها وتأثيرهما على الإنسان المعاصر في علاقته بالوعي والطبيعة والسعادة، موضحا كيفية انتقاله من مرحلة التعايش والانسجام والتقديس إلى طور التسخير والهيمنة والتدمير.
الترجمة سيئة كنت مضطرا لمطالعة فقرات كاملة من النص الاصلي حتى استوعب النص المترجم في طبعة فخمة.

[Dina Kaidir]

...the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.
~Wendell Berry

[Xinyuan Wong]

One of the best books I have had the privilege of reading in a long time.

May be a bit difficult for the average reader in the European and North American sphere,
but is helpful for East Asians that have had exposure to the fields of History of Science / the works of Joseph Needham / Daoist and Buddhist understandings of nature.

Notwithstanding the fact that apparently ISIS has decided to takfir Prof. Nasr, his books contributed a great deal to helping me understand how present-day Europe and North America ended up with its spiritual crisis, in relation to how nature is used as raw material instead of being respected in its own right as alive and filled with sacredness. (In other words, plants and animals are alive, you a**holes.)

The precision of Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr is deft, when it comes to illustrating the relationship between political philosophy, history, "science" as understood in the Latin definitions that were transmitted into the European Enlightenment from the Islamic world via Toledo, Spain....

....and how the ibn Rushd (Averroes) transmission of philosophy came to dominate industrial modern societies, creating the quantitative shadow that pervades the English-speaking, German-speaking, and Russian-speaking spheres of thought. Till today, ibn Rushd's imprints shapes the way in which we classify people according to how much they have in their hands, casting a deep shadow of materialist reductionism over our hearts. What is the worth of a human being?

In my own journey of repentance for the fact that my great-grandfather, Mr Soh Mah Eng, was one of the most prominent British colonial collaborators and construction mogul behind the Cenotaph, it is humbling to consider the way in which his abandonment of coolies onshore during the outbreak of World War II, still shapes the way that Singaporean Anglophone ruling elites became so antagonistic towards Confucianism. In my own way, I am not unlike the descendants of the Chiang Kai-shek family. I am one of the least traumatised people of East Asian descents under 30, to be found anywhere in the world today, and I owe a lifelong debt to the forests of Nusantara for that.

Is it a debt that I can ever hope to repay? What is the role of the unseen in shaping the seen world?

[Najibah Bakar]

Buku ini hanya akan dapat dinikmati dan difahami oleh pembaca sepenuhnya jika pembaca telah mempersiap diri dengan pembacaan latar yang amat luas dalam sejarah sains, falsafah ilmu, metafizik, kosmologi, sejarah Kristianiti dan perbandingan agama.

Bagi saya sendiri, pembacaan kali ini mencabar kerana banyak fahaman falsafah yang disebutkan tidak saya dalami dengan baik. Begitu juga perihal perkembangan sejarah sains dari zaman klasik. Namun secara umum, hujah yang ingin dibawakan oleh pengarang dapat ditangkap.

Pengarang menyeru orang Barat kembali kepada metafizik dan falsafah yang tidak dibelenggu oleh batasan sains moden agar hakikat sebenar alam ini dapat difahami dengan lebih adil tanpa meninggalkan sisi batin atau ruhaninya. Hanya apabila manusia dapat menghargai sisi batin ini, dan tidak menafikan perkara yang tidak dapat disukat melalui kaedah kualitatif dan empirik, maka mereka akan dapat membuat perenungan dan memahami maqam yang berbeza-beza antara segala wujud di alam tabii, hingga dapat menghargai tempat mereka dalam alam sebagai pelindung, bukan penguasa.

Menarik juga untuk direnungkan, kefahaman dan aliran anutan batin yang menyeleweng adalah sebuah reaksi daripada penafian sains moden terhadap sisi ruhani manusia.

[Bnar]

لە ڕۆژگاری ڕابردوودا دەبوو مرۆڤ لە سروشت بپارێزرێت، بەڵام ئێستا پێچەوانەیە، هەم لە ئاشتیدا و هەم لە جەنگیشدا دەبێت سروشت لەژێر چەپۆکی مرۆڤ دەربهێنرێت. زۆرێک بەو خەیاڵەوە دەژین گوایە تەنها جەنگ خراپە و ئەگەر جەنگ بنبڕ بکرێت مرۆڤ زەوی دەکاتە بەهەشت. بەڵام لە ڕاستیدا لە جەنگ و ئاشتیدا مرۆڤ هەر لە دەستدرێژیکردن بۆ سەر سروشت ناوەستێت. چ جیاوازییەکی هەیە بە تەغقاندنەوەی بۆمبێک سەرچاوە ئاوییەکان پیس بکەیت، یاخود بە ڕێگاگەلی هێواشتر و لە ماوەی بیست ساڵدا ئەوە ئەنجام بدەیت؟ جیاوازییەکە تەنها کاتە، چونکە ئەنجامەکە یەک شتە و لە هەردوو حاڵەتەکەدا چەپۆکی مرۆڤ لەسەر سروشتە.
پەڕەی ۱۳٥
مرۆڤی مۆدێرن وەک هاوسەرێک مامەڵە لەگەڵ سروشتدا ناکات، کە سوودی لێ وەرگرێت و لە هەمان کاتیشدا بەرامبەری بەرپرسیار بێت. بەڵکو وەک سۆزانییەک هەڵسوکەوت لەگەڵ سروشتدا دەکات، ئەوپەڕی چێژی خۆی لێ وەرئەگرێت و هیچ ڕێزێکیشی لێ ناگرێت. کێشەکە لەوەدایە سروشت چیتر چێژوەرگرتنێکی وا قبووڵ ناکات. لە ڕاستیشدا هەر ئەم بەرهەڵستییەی سروشتیشە وای لە زۆرێک کردووە نیگەرانی دۆخەکە بن.
پەڕەی ۱٨

[Nigar]

the book is critique of modern science and its applications. you'd enjoy it more if you are more familiar with some of the scientific terms and influential scientists, specifically in physics. there are long, detailed references as well in case the reader wants to read more around this topic.

there is one line that stuck with me in the end which goes like 'in a world where almost everything can be criticised - art, literature, religion - it is a taboo to criticise modern science and its applications. and why science critics dont hold the same status as art or literature critics?'

also from the first pages, the book reminded me of John Steinbeck's quote - 'I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction'

[Ali Zarezade]

طبیعت که در تمامی ادیان به عنوان یکی از آیات خداوند در نظر گرفته می‌شد، ‌در عصر جدید به یک پدیده فیزیکی فاقد روح و معنا تقلیل یافته است.
در گذشته همه پدیده‌های طبیعی با دلایل متافیزیکی توجیه می‌شدند اما با ظهور علم و سلطه همه جانبه آن بر تمامی عرصه‌‌های زندگی بشر و پیدا شدن توجیه‌های فیزیکی برای پدیده‌های طبیعی، گویی به یک باره طبیعت فارغ از روح شد. جالب اینجا است که روح انسان عصر جدید به راحتی با گفتن اینکه مثلا جاذبه باعث افتادن سیب می‌شود اقناع می‌گردد و دیگر سوالی از این نمی‌کند که چرا جاذبه وجود دارد! به راستی چه تفاوت بنیادی در احاله افتادن سیب به خدا یا جاذبه وجود دارد!؟ جالب‌تر اینکه سلطه‌ای علم و فلسفه سکولار بعد از عصر روشنگری به حدی بوده است که حتی برای بررسی صحت مسایل متافیزیکی هم باید فیزیک (علم)‌ اظهار نظر کند! بدیهی است که در تکنولوژی توسعه یافته با این علم سکولار،‌ علمی که آفریدگار هستی را فرضی زاید می‌داند،‌ طبیعت تقدسی ندارد و برای رسیدن به سرمایه (کاپیتال) هر (سوء) استفاده‌ای از آن می‌کند…

[Elyse]

Although well-written, I believe that his spiritual accusations towards modern man are misguided. I appreciate the philosophical approach, but the economics of globalization and industrialization can’t be overlooked in this discussion.

Also, I understand everyone is biased towards their own religion, but for the entire book, I believe Nasr was yearning to return Islamic Golden Age full-stop.

[Emily C]

Wow!! A tour de force, indeed. Nasr’s call for the modern world to recover the sanctity of nature is more relevant than ever in 2026. The history of the West’s pull away from the sacred with the advent of Reason (capital R) and the scientific method demands examination and Nasr lays out a real brain bake for a peon like me. This has already changed the course of my thinking.

[Shannen]

Without much knowledge of the history of philosophy, some references were over my head, making some sections a bit of a slog. Outside of my own shortcomings, the author was insightful and thought-provoking, with solid advice about his hopeful path forward, while being realistic about the hurdles.

[Hossein]

This book does a great job addressing part of Dr. Nasr's core concept of 'Green Religion.' It's highly recommended for anyone studying the basic sciences, especially chemistry and physics, to give it a look.

[Abdelrhman Eldbeky]

لأ

[Mohd Jamizal]

Serious discussion not just on man and nature but placement of man as microcosm and macrocosm .Discussion of wujud also here and it is highly philosophical.

[Hailane Salam]

"Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man" by Seyyed Hossein Nasr is a deeply insightful and thought-provoking book that offers a refreshing perspective on the relationship between humanity and nature. Nasr's eloquent writing style and vast knowledge of various spiritual traditions make this book a true gem for anyone interested in spirituality and its relevance to modern-day issues.

Nasr argues that the modern world has lost touch with its spiritual roots, resulting in a crisis that has manifested itself in various ways, including the destruction of the natural world. He emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with the sacred in order to heal this crisis and proposes a more holistic approach to understanding the relationship between man and nature.

Overall, "Man and Nature" is a must-read for anyone interested in spirituality and its relevance to contemporary issues, including architecture. Nasr's ideas and perspectives are sure to inspire readers to think deeply about their own relationship with the natural world and how they can contribute to a more sustainable and harmonious future.

[Emin Erdem]

Nasr, tamamen maddi yönde gelişmiş olan modern bilimin pratik uygulamalarının doğaya nasıl zarar verdiğini, çağımızda neden Doğa ile aramızda manevi bir ilişki olmadığını ve Doğaya karşı saldırgan tutumumuza neyin sebep olduğunu çok anlaşılır bir şekilde açıklamış. Doğa ile ilgili metafiziki ilkelerden bahsetmesi de tam olarak neyi kaybettiğimizi daha iyi anlamamızı sağlıyor.

[Aziza Aouhassi]

"Un the end what se can say with all certainty is that there is no peace possible among men unless there is peace and harmony with nature. And n order to have peace and harmony with nature one must be in harmony and equilibrium with Heaven, and ultimately with the Source and Origin of all things. He who is at peace with God is also at peace with His creation, both with nature and man."

[Nina Lana]

good