RELIGION & THE ORDER OF NATURE, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr. New York: Oxford University Press By Aslı Yıldırım

Reviewed by: Asl YILDIRIM * “The Earth is bleeding from wounds inflicted upon it by a humanity no longer in harmony with Heaven and therefore in constant strife with the terrestrial environment.” These are the introductory words of Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who is not only a distinguished member of the philosophical intelligentsia but also a prolific thinker and writer who deals with a variety of themes from religion to architecture, art, spirituality, Sufism, literature, and natural environment. Mostly described as a ‘polymath’, he is the writer of over 50 books and more than 500 articles and the only Muslim to be included in the Library of Living Philosophers among so many other memberships.

After obtaining a scholarship to MIT, he received an undergraduate degree in physics in 1954 and pursued his Ph.D. degree in the history of science and philosophy from Harvard University. His doctoral dissertation was about Islamic cosmological doctrines, the first work in Islamic studies deals with cosmology, but by that time, he became already acquainted with the works of Frithjof Schuon, a prominent follower of the Traditionalist school of thought, the doctrine which shaped Professor’s life and thought ever since. So much so, when he returned to Iran and was offered to lead the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, in which a group of scholars composed of names like Henri Corbin, William Chittick, Sachiko Murata, and Toshihiko Izutsu held various philosophical discourses, was the first academic institution established in Iran in accordance with the intellectual principles of Philosophia Perennis. Professor Nasr currently teaches Islamic Studies at George Washington University.