In both of these fields...

In both of these fields, Nasr stands out as a rigorous practitioner of the traditional school, and presents a profound evaluation of the traditional and modern natural sciences from the point of view of traditional doctrines. This can best be seen in his insistence on the necessity of scientia sacra and the revival of pre-modern cosmologies that the traditional civilizations have produced over the centuries.

Being the application of a number of metaphysical principles expounded by the traditional school and especially by Rene Guenon, Nasr's critique of modern science is accordingly motivated neither by a purely utilitarian impulse nor by a mere academic and historical interest.

Rather, his uncompromising defense of traditional sciences on the one hand, and relentless attack on the philosophical claims of modern science on the other, is to be seen as an encounter between the traditional and the modern at the metaphysical level as it pertains to the domain of natural sciences.

It is, therefore, important to note at the outset that Nasr's critique of modern science is marked off from the current criticisms leveled against modern Western science by its metaphysical and religious stance.

According to Nasr, modern science is an anomaly not simply because we have to pay a high price by destroying the natural environment but because it operates within a seriously misguided framework in which everything is reduced to pure quantity and by which the modern man is made to think that all of his problems from transportation to spiritual salvation can ultimately be solved by further progress in science.

The high cost of the scientistic fallacy is to make spiritual realities appear as unreal and redundant, or at least not relevant to the world-picture presented by modern science. In sharp contrast to this naïve belief in science and progress which has come under severe attack especially after World War II, Nasr aims at analyzing and questioning the very foundations upon which modern science as the pseudo-religion of the modern age is based.

In this regard, one may argue that Nasr's work is not so much concerned with the philosophy of science in the current sense of the term as with the metaphysics of science, viz. the metaphysical framework in which science, be it modern or pre-modern, is to be understood and given its due place in the hierarchy of knowledge. For Nasr, it is the availability or absence of such a metaphysics that makes science modern or traditional.