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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Sacred Versus the Secular: Nasr On Science Endnotes [^1] Knowledge and the Sacred (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), p. [^130]: [^2] The Need for a Sacred Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), pp. 1-[^2]: [^3] Not all traditional sciences are, however, sacred. There is always a human element attached to the formulation of traditional sciences which cannot be taken to be sacred in the strict sense of the term.

For Nasr's distinction between the two, see The Need for a Sacred Science, p. [^96]: [^4] The best historical account of the great chain of being is A. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of and Idea (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960). [^5] Titus Burckhardt, The Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science and Sacred Art, tr. by William Stoddart (Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1987), p.

[^17]: [^6] Nasr gives a detailed analysis of this point in his works on Islamic science. Especially his Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines has been devoted to the concept of nature and the methods used for its study by Ikhwan al-Safa, al-Biruni and Ibn Sina. [^7] This epistemological claim has far-reaching consequences for our relationship with the world and with other human beings. Unfortunately, there is no space here to delve into this important subject.

One may, however, refer to Huston Smith's concise discussion in his Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 96-[^117]: [^8] In contemporary philosophy of science, this issue has been discussed around the question of whether we can have observation without theory.

As the realists and the instrumentalists alike agree on, scientific observation is always theory-laden and this does not necessarily undermine the scientific validity of observation within a particular science. [^9] For an illustration of this point, see Nasr's Islamic Science An Illustrated Study (Kent: World of Islam Festival Publishing Company Ltd., 1976), and Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge, 1987). [^10] Rene Guenon, La Crise du Monde Moderne, (Gallimard, 1946), pp.

76-[^77]: [^11] Although one may cite tens of classical books and treatises on the hierarchy of being and knowledge, two contemporary works are worth-mentioning here: E. F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), especially, pp.