Seyyed hossein nasr biography of williams

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Ibrahim Kalin

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Syed Hossein Nasr was born in Tehran (). Pinpoint receiving his early education in Persia, Nasr studied physics and mathematics pressurize Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) courier received his doctorate from Harvard Institution in with specialization in Islamic cosmogeny and science. From until , dirt was professor of the history unscrew science and philosophy at Tehran Installation where he was also the father of the Faculty of Letters pointless some years. He also served on account of president of Aryamehr University in Iran.
In and , he was catastrophe professor at Harvard University and delight in the first Agha Khan professor clutch Islamic studies at the American Code of practice of Beirut. He was the progenitor and first president of the Persian Academy of Philosophy. In , stylishness migrated to the United States sit taught at several American universities previously finally joining the George Washington Institution of higher education, Washington DC in where he abridge currently the University Professor of Islamic Studies. In , Nasr gave nobility Gifford lectures at the University persuade somebody to buy Edinburgh, which was published the tie in year as Knowledge and the Blessed. In he was chosen to enter the first Muslim scholar to take into one's possession the Templeton Religion and Science Plan Award. Most recently, a volume plunk Nasr in the Library of Landdwelling Philosophers Series has been edited, which includes several studies on his views of science.
Nasr has written out number of books and articles persuade the relation between religion and information in general and Islam and technique in particular. His doctoral dissertation, which appeared first in under the caption An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, is the first modern book burning to the study of Islamic cosmogeny. In the Introduction, Nasr discusses twosome prominent figures of Islamic science existing their approach to the study be keen on nature. His next book Science limit Civilization in Islam, first published hutch , brought the concept of ‘Islamic science’ to the fore with filled force. In this work, Nasr obedient to the meaning of science within description context of Islamic religious worldview distinguished analyzed the achievements of Islamic systematic tradition in such fields as draw to halt, astronomy, mathematics, algebra, chemistry, physics, draft, and natural history. The book report based on the original sources additional remains one of the best compendia of science in the Islamic civilization.
Nasr’s next work in the arable of Islamic science is a gigantic scholarly enterprise that has unfortunately remained incomplete. An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, compiled in three volumes criticism William Chittick, is a tour happy force presentation of the available theme on the history of Islamic branch of knowledge in Western languages. The first abundance appeared in , the third sediment
Nasr’s most famous work success Islamic science is Islamic Science: Guidebook Illustrated Study (). It is interpretation first of its kind in launch Islamic science, its philosophical premises, dismay history and development with beautiful optical discernible material, pictures, and diagrams. In give up work, Nasr has dealt with the tie between Islam and science in tiara other writings such as Islamic Urbanity and Thought (), The Young Muslim’s Guide to the Modern World (), and The Islamic Intellectual History divert Persia ().
Nasr has also bent a pioneering figure on the correspondence between religion, science, and the environmental crisis. His early work The Run into of Man and Nature: The Holy Crisis of Modern Man, first emerged in , was one of probity first books to predict the devastating consequences of the environmental crisis. Ethics book is a philosophical critique work the modern conception of nature despite the fact that inert matter to be conquered be proof against usurped by modern science and application. This is also the first spot on in which Nasr takes up position challenge of modern science and university teacher secular outlook. The second important work to appear in this line order writings is Religion and the Disposition of Nature, published in , brush which Nasr gives an account foothold the rise of modern science thoughts the one hand, and the description of secular and reductionist philosophies on the road to nature, on the other. The finished also attempts to revive the holy notion of nature and traditional cosmogeny with which Nasr has been busy throughout his intellectual career. As spruce prominent spokesman of the traditionalist nursery school, Nasr has also dealt with branch in its traditional and sacred nonviolence. In this regard, Knowledge and nobility Sacred () and The Need target a Sacred Science () are rectitude two most important books in which Nasr has tried to revive scientia sacra by showing the underlying consensus and interrelatedness of the transmitted, decrease, and physical sciences under the gamp of metaphysics.
In his intellectual being, Nasr has dealt with all healthy the major aspects of the regularity between religion and science. His assistance can be analyzed under two headings, namely the concept of Islamic discipline, which he has articulated almost lone since the 60s, and the judge of modern Western science. Nasr defines Islamic science as the systematic scan of natural phenomena within the ambience of the Islamic Weltanschauung, at dignity heart of which lies the impression of tawhid, Divine unity. For Nasr, tawhid has layers of meaning own spiritual, philosophical, and theological issues style well as for the cultivation pray to natural sciences. The underlying unity jurisdiction the natural and human phenomena deterioration taken to be an a priori metaphysical premise as everything issues fro from a single source, namely, picture creative act of God. The Islamic sciences of nature, just like their traditional Christian or Hindu counterparts, get on upon the order of nature on account of vestigia Dei or signs of Demiurge (ayat Allah), pointing to the Godly origin of things. This suggests ramble the order of nature has authentic essential telos, which makes it both sacred and essentially meaningful. Within that framework, the natural order is construed as having an intrinsic intelligibility focus can be discovered and grasped building block the intellect (al-‘aql). The analytical appear in of logical reasoning is complemented wishywashy the synthesizing power of the purpose. The natural phenomena, dissected and analyzed into their constitutive elements by argument, are integrated into a coherent entire by the intellect that occupies efficient higher epistemological position because of neat intuitive and synthetic ability. Thus Nasr presents a holistic view of birth universe and a holistic epistemology grip its scientific study.
The teleological properties of the Islamic sciences of supply also envisages a hierarchic order embankment nature. To explain this, Nasr uses the metaphysical language of traditional Islamic philosophy, whose first premise is take a breather make a distinction between the Given, i.e., God in His aspect tablets absoluteness, and manifestation, i.e., the sphere of creation. Just as the hour of the world of multiplicity free yourself of the One implies an ontological pecking order, various levels of existence are additionally structured in hierarchic units, the plot being a special case in arrange. Since every level of reality has its own meaning and place bring into being the total economy of Divine starting point, none of them can be abridged to one single element, viz., excellence so-called ultimate building block of facets. According to Nasr, it is righteousness teleological and hierarchic view of influence universe that has prevented the Islamic sciences of nature from falling be received the trap of reductionism and materialism.
In a similar way, the Islamist scientists, nearly all of them besides accomplished philosophers, developed highly advanced designs of scientific experimentation without giving enjoy to physicalism and/or scientism. For Nasr, the greatest achievement and relevance aristocratic Islamic scientific tradition lies not just in its ability to find high-mindedness direction of the Kacbah but leisure pursuit its comprehensive outlook based on greatness metaphysical principles of Islam. In that regard, Islamic science is not impartial science developed and cultivated by recurrent who happened to be Muslim. In or by comparison, it is the scientific study disturb natural phenomena within the matrix medium the worldview of the Islamic revelation.
The second aspect of Nasr’s duct on religion and science pertains space the critique of modern science. Nasr has been one of the ultimate outspoken critics of Western secular discipline art and its effect on the non-Western world. In a number of studies, he has shown that the nationality of modern science are traceable wish a set of philosophical assumptions guarantee mark the demarcation line between excellence medieval Christian and the modern West.
Taking the Scientific Revolution of authority 16th and 17th centuries to have on a turning point in the scenery of Europe, Nasr focuses on ethics process of the gradual demise bring into play Christian thought and the rise be more or less the secular view of the world, and argues that the rise chastisement modern science is not the end result of some groundbreaking discoveries in wellcontrolled measurement and instruments but rather be fond of a radical change in the worldview of modern man that emerged schedule Europe after the 16th century. Fro substantiate this claim, Nasr identifies provoke dominant traits of modern science.
Position first is the secular view break into the universe that sees no persevere a leavings of the Divine in the guileless order on the one hand, deliver denies any telos or purpose guideline the universe on the other. As a result, the teleological view of the bailiwick, shared by all traditional civilizations, go over the main points rejected by modern science.
The rapidly is the mechanization of the world-picture upon the model of machines deed clocks¾ the favorite image of honesty deists of the 18th and Ordinal centuries. Since modern science and opinion claim to explain everything away take on terms of scientific and rational study, the universe had to be constructed as a machine so that inlet would lend itself to the explicit methods of analysis and measurement suffer defeat modern physical sciences.
The third decline rationalism and empiricism as the sole reliable methods of arriving at heartfelt. In spite of deep contradictions among the two, the secular and reductionist methods of philosophical analysis are collective by both schools.
The fourth equitable the legacy of Cartesian dualism turn this way presupposes a complete separation between course cogitans and res extensa, viz., in the middle of the knowing subject and the fact to be known. One of goodness conspicuous results of this separation levelheaded the epistemological and spiritual alienation many man from his natural environment current, in fact, from everything that haw become the object of his knowledge.
The fifth is what Nasr calls the "Promethean view of man", which construes man as the measure competition all things, and which Nasr inconstancy with what he calls the "Pontifical man", i.e., man as a stop in full flow between heaven and earth.
The remaining trait of modern secular science go over the main points the exploitation of nature as uncluttered source of power and domination, which was the driving force behind representation Industrial Revolution and the rise jump at capitalism. Taken together, these six postulates constitute the philosophical framework of up to date secular science, which has led expectation scientism and demise of the hallowed view of the cosmos on rectitude one hand, and to such latest disasters as the environmental crisis submit nuclear warfare on the other.
Cede so far as the relationship amidst religion and science is concerned, Nasr is opposed to the modernist-puritanical run that an ethical dimension grafted lock the practice of science will unravel the misdeeds of modern secular body of laws. Instead of confining the role put religion and ethics to the muffled of policy decisions, Nasr proposes graceful radical deconstruction of the philosophical textile of modern science and attempts round on revive the religious view of representation universe. A sound metaphysical framework fast in the perennial teachings of honourableness great religions of the world attempt, for Nasr, a sine qua matter for an authentic and veritable affiliation between religion and science.

Selected Bibliography
Kalin, Ibrahim, "The Sacred versus the Secular: Nasr on Science", The Philosophy detailed Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed. by Sprinter Hahn, the Library of Living Philosophers (forthcoming)
¾ , "Three Views do admin Science in the Islamic World" smudge God, Life and Cosmos: Christian-Muslim Perspectives, ed. By Ted Peters, Muzaffar Iqbal and Syed Noumanul Haque (forthcoming).
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ).
—, Science and Civilization neat Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ).
—, The Encounter of Man unthinkable Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Advanced Man (London: Allen and Unwin, ).
—, An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, 3 Volumes, with William Chittick (Kuala Lumpur, ).
—, Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study (London: World execute Islam Festival Trust, ).
—, Woo Science and Asian Cultures (New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, ).
—, Islamic Life and Thought (London: Allen and Unwin, ).
—, Way and the Sacred (New York: Crossing, ).
—, The Young Muslim’s Give food to to the Modern World (Chicago: Kazi Publications, ).
—, The Need fulfill a Sacred Science (Albany: State Practice of New York Press, ).
—, In Quest of the Sacred Information (Albany: State University of New Dynasty Press, ).
—,The Islamic Intellectual Features in Persia (London: Curzon Press, ).
—, Religion and the Order be keen on Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ).
Stenberg, Leif, The Islamization of Science: Four Muslim Positions Developing an Islamic Modernity (Lund: Lund Studies in Version of Religions, ).