4/19/2020 Can Our Science and Economics Honor Nature?

- Article - Renovatio

The Underwave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai (1829–1833)

Can Our Science and Economics Honor
Nature?
The island of Misali, part of the Zanzibar archipelago in the Indian Ocean, is a wonderful example of the remarkable role
that religious values can play in confronting the crisis facing our natural world.1 The coral reef surrounding the largely
uninhabited island is home to a rich variety of fish and turtles, providing direct livelihood to people in neighboring Pemba,
which is over 95 percent Muslim. But rising population and depleting fish stocks led fishermen to adopt desperate and
unsustainable fishing methods to maintain their catch, including dynamite fishing and the use of guns. Although such
destructive methods damaged the corals and harmed local species, government bans had practically no impact. Local
religious leaders helped restore sustainable fishing and a rich underwater life to the island, however, by highlighting Islamic
teachings about conservation.
The fishermen clearly failed to understand and apply Qurʼanic lessons about manʼs stewardship of nature to their fishing
methods, requiring remonstration from local religious leaders to correct their self-destructive practices. As faithful
Muslims, their hearts and minds already contained a consciousness about nature rooted in spirituality that religious
leaders could actualize through advice drawn from Qurʼanic teachings. One local fisherman aptly summarized why the
religious message succeeded, whereas government decrees had failed. “It is easy to ignore the government,” he said, “but
no-one can break Godʼs law.”2
Religion, Science, and Nature
Analogous examples of the importance of religion in protecting nature are found in all the worldʼs major religious
traditions.3 Indeed, most people in the world may only heed religious, as opposed to secular, ethics about nature, and
scientists increasingly recognize the need for religion and science to join forces to address the crisis.4 In 1991, for
example, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and other renowned scientists issued a joint statement entitled “Preserving and
Cherishing the Earth: An Appeal for Joint Commitment in Science and Religion,” which declared:
[Our current environmental] problems of such magnitude, and solutions demanding so broad a perspective must be
recognized from the outset as having a religious as well as a scientific dimension. Mindful of our common responsibility,
we scientists—many of us long engaged in combating the environmental crisis—urgently appeal to the world religious
community to commit, in word and deed, and as boldly as is required, to preserve the environment of the Earth.5

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Yet the agnosticism of many scientific thinkers raises the question of how such a call can coexist with a view that, in the
words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “claims for itself a monopoly of the knowledge of the order of nature,” or the knowledge
that is accepted by society as “science.”6 It is one thing for religious leaders to protect nature by highlighting the sanctity
of Godʼs creation, as the example of the fishermen in Misali illustrates, and quite another thing to defend the environment
from exploitation relying on a secular worldview that arguably conflates values and tastes as “preferences” that have no
moral import, thus compromising the ability to make morally meaningful statements.7 Nasr asserts, “In a world in which
the very category of ‘sacrednessʼ as applied to nature is meaningless, to speak of the sacredness of life is little more than
sentimental thinking or hypocrisy.”8
It is necessary here to highlight the radical difference between science as organized knowledge, which can refer to any
level of reality, and scientism, which claims that modern science, defined as a strictly empirical or sensory means of
knowing the material world, has a monopoly on knowledge—that is, that anything beyond the sensory world is unreal,
impossible to prove, or purely fanciful. Accordingly, scientism is an ideological construct that effectively supplants a
metaphysical view of the universe, eliminating any basis for religious ethics about the environment through its
reductionism. It ignores any higher, divine or celestial, levels of reality, and qualities such as beauty, justice, and virtue,
which are above sensory, empirically observable phenomena.
If there is to be lasting cooperation about nature between religion and science, scientism, which is inherently hostile to
religion, cannot be allowed to usurp the role of science. In fact, scientism is “bad philosophy,” not “good science.” It is
self-refuting—because it is impossible to prove that “The only way to know anything truly is by using your physical
senses” by using your physical senses.9 Moreover, contemporary “hard science” itself has now brought to light a number
of “limit theorems,” a phrase the Catholic philosopher-scientist Wolfgang Smith introduces to describe various ways
science discloses its own boundaries.10
It is then a scientistic (not a scientific) worldview which, through confining itself to technological, political, economic, and
other purely materialistic structures, does injustice to man and threatens nature by treating both as resources rather than
as the sacred creations they are. Specific crisis events, such as the melting of the glaciers of Mount Everest, with its dire
consequences for downstream farming and hydropower,11 the melting ice sheets of the Antarctic and Greenland, or the
acidification of the oceans and destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, are merely the “tip of the iceberg,” to borrow an
analogy from systems theory,12 because they are manifestations of unnoticed larger problems generated by an underlying
dysfunction: our worldview.
Accordingly, addressing this root cause requires that we change how we look at the world, at ourselves—and ultimately, at
Reality.13 Religion asserts that only a holistic approach to the sciences of man and nature can solve the crisis we face, by
showing us how to change the way we live.
Modern economic thought runs counter to this solution. First emerging in an industrializing eighteenth century context
marked by surging materialism, it separates economics from social life and from the possibility of an integrative, religiously
informed worldview. Robert Foley describes this breach:
Modern society is made up of two spheres: an economic sphere of individual initiative and interaction, governed by
impersonal laws that assure a beneficent outcome by pursuit of self-interest; and the rest of social life, including political,
religious, and moral interactions that require the conscious balancing of self-interest with social considerations.14
This is sometimes called the “separate domain” argument; it posits that the motivations of “actors” in the
economy, whether they are ethical or not, have nothing to do with whether a market economy generates “beneficent”
outcomes, because economic exchange is compatible with a variety of motives, whether egoist or altruist, making the free
market amoral (as opposed to immoral).
But if market prices fail to include environmental costs in the price of goods, then underpricing these goods leads to
environmental degradation, called “market failure” by economists. And conventional economics cannot answer the
question, “Why not leave it to future generations to bear the costs of current pollution, given the delay between cause and
effect?” Conventional economic theory attempts to respond to market failures with technical solutions within the prevailing
economic paradigm, ignoring the root causes of these crises in favor of short-term solutions that often cause worse
outcomes in the long term. A purely scientistic worldview, moreover, arguably demands solutions based on the separate
domain argument to the maximum extent possible. 
But if the separation of ethics from economics, along with the technological and socio-economic structures that result
from this separation, leads to economic instability in the short term and environmental unsustainability in the long term,
then we must question not only whether an economic system needs virtuous actors, but also whether the economic
system itself must be institutionally or structurally virtuous. As Gandhi put it, “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one
will need to be good” is one of the greatest delusions of our time.15
Religion then must challenge the mainstream economic claim that industrial and post-industrial capitalism, as well as
economies based on Marxist thought, such as communism, can be environmentally sustainable. Only through a
metaphysical approach can we clarify the intimate, but neglected, connection between religious cosmological sciences

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and religious economic thought. To arrive there, however, we must first identify the secular roots of the crisis nature faces
and also understand why conventional responses to this crisis have failed. Only then can we find a way forward, through a
holistic approach that integrates ethics and economics and, ultimately, honors nature as Godʼs creation. 
Work as a Spiritual Practice
All the worldʼs major religions see the end of the human state in the perfection of our spiritual possibilities. Economic
activity must therefore address our physical, intellectual, and spiritual needs, balancing all three in such a way that no
single dimension is emphasized at the expense of others. E.F. Schumacher, arguably the most important economist to
represent religious thought in the twentieth century,16 identified the basic objectives of this integral approach in terms of
three objectives that would meet the needs of individuals for personal and spiritual growth and dignity:
First, to provide necessary and useful goods and services. Second, to enable every one of us to use and thereby perfect
our gifts like good stewards. Third, to do so in service to, and in cooperation with, others, so as to liberate ourselves from
our … egocentricity.17
Clearly, all three objectives apply to what one does and what one makes.18 Economic activity thus has two aspects:
the transitive (or objective) aspect and the intransitive (or personal) aspect. Work is transitive that produces
results outside of the worker and is directed to some object or service in the external world (Schumacherʼs first objective
of work). Work is intransitive where its effects stay within the worker and contribute to the formation of character
(Schumacherʼs second and third objectives of work). Titus Burckhardt illustrates this point in a Muslim context: 
I knew a comb-maker who worked in the street of his guild, the mshshatin.  He was called ‘Abd al-Aziz (the “slave of the
Almighty”) and always wore a black jellaba—the loose, hooded garment with sleeves—and a white turban with a litham,
the face veil, which surrounded his somewhat severe features. He obtained the horn for his combs from ox skulls, which
he bought from butchers. He dried the horned skulls at a rented place, removed the horns, opened them lengthwise, and
straightened them over a fire, a procedure that had to be done with the greatest care, lest they should break. From this
raw material he cut combs and turned boxes for antimony (used as an eye decoration) on a simple lathe; this he did by
manipulating, with his left hand, a bow which, wrapped round a spindle, caused the apparatus to rotate. In his right hand
he held the knife, and with his foot he pushed against the counterweight. As he worked he would sing Qurʼanic surahs in a
humming tone.
I learned that, as a result of an eye disease which is common in Africa, he was already half blind, and that, in view of long
practice, he was able to “feel” his work, rather than see it. One day he complained to me that the importation of plastic
combs was diminishing his business: “It is not only a pity that today, solely on account of price, poor quality combs from a
factory are being preferred to much more durable horn combs,” he said; “it is also senseless that people should stand by a
machine and mindlessly repeat the same movement, while an old craft like mine falls into oblivion. My work may seem
crude to you; but it harbours a subtle meaning which cannot be explained in words. I myself acquired it only after many
long years, and even if I wanted to, I could not automatically pass it on to my son, if he himself did not wish to acquire it—
and I think he would rather take up another occupation. This craft can be traced back from apprentice to master until one
reaches our Lord Seth, the son of Adam. It was he who first taught it to men, and what a Prophet brings—for Seth was a
Prophet—must clearly have a special purpose, both outwardly and inwardly. I gradually came to understand that there is
nothing fortuitous about this craft, that each movement and each procedure is the bearer of an element of wisdom. But
not everyone can understand this. But even if one does not know this, it is still stupid and reprehensible to rob men of the
inheritance of Prophets, and to put them in front of a machine where, day in and day out, they must perform a
meaningless task.”19
In the example of ‘Abd al-Aziz the comb-maker, all economists would recognize the first objective, or the transitive aspect
of work—the production of goods and services for human welfare. Some economists like Adam Smith recognized the
intransitive aspect related to the second and third objectives of work to various degrees, acknowledging that different
types of work have different effects. As Smith noted in later editions of The Wealth of Nations, employing few of manʼs
faculties could have serious social costs by reducing certain human capabilities:
The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the
same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out
expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and
generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders
him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or
tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private
life.20
From the holistic perspective of religious ethics, production or exchange that violates any of the three objectives is
“degrading” because we decrease the value of the objective we violate not quantitatively, but qualitatively. One reason is
because “goods differ in kind,”21 so to view selling pornography, for example, as the same as selling household items is
ultimately a category mistake. The first dehumanizes its producers, the second, ideally, does not. When “everything is for

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sale,” writes Michael Sandel, markets themselves may corrupt goods. If you pay children to read books, he explains, then
children are taught that reading is a chore, not a practice with intrinsic worth; similarly, selling seats in a classroom
diminishes the value of a diploma, and hiring foreign mercenaries degrades citizenship. Sandel concludes: “[W]hen we
decide that certain goods may be bought and sold, we decide, at least implicitly, that it is appropriate to treat them as
commodities, as instruments of profit and use.”22
A holistic approach, however, asserts that humans are human beings, not simply human “havings” and “doings.”23 If it is
true that complete fulfillment is only found in the unlimited reality of God (whether approached in personal or supra-
personal terms), as all the worldʼs major religions assert, then it follows that to seek the Infinite in finite goods can only
result in profound disappointment, pain, and even despair. Accumulating wealth for its own sake converts the joy and
blessings of wealth into a sort of envious misery, because somebody else will always have more. Indeed, a misdirected
search for the Infinite has stoked appetites that now insatiably devour the beauty of the natural world. Bereft of the
traditional worldview of their ancestors, large segments of humanity have strayed from paths that lead to a sense of the
sacred or transcendent, to the Beauty that satisfied humans grounded in living religious traditions for millennia.
We can only find the path again by understanding that our soul's unconditional happiness can be achieved by finding and
expressing Beauty within itself. But to fill the void created by the absence of inward beauty24 with heedless consumption
can be likened to drinking saltwater—it will only make us thirstier. Schumacher describes this cycle in the context of
modern economies:
The basic aim of modern industrialism is not to make work satisfying but to raise productivity; its proudest achievement is
labor saving, whereby labor is stamped with the mark of undesirability. But what is undesirable cannot confer dignity; so
the working life of a laborer is a life without dignity. The result, not surprisingly, is a spirit of sullen irresponsibility which
refuses to be mollified by higher wage awards but is often only stimulated by them.25
It is precisely such a cycle—the endless need for more—that is destroying our natural world.
Can Our Economics Be Ethical?
The central question about the adverse relationship between nature and the economy is whether we are in need of
institutional transformation or simply moderate reform. The Catholic ethicist John Sniegocki notes that free trade
economists overwhelmingly believe only more economic growth through capitalism can solve pressing social ills. For the
environment, many reference the “Kuznets curve,” a theory that asserts that growth first generates pollution, but
eventually, as wealth increases, better technologies, increased efficiencies, and mitigation efforts begin to resolve
ecological degradation. These theorists, writes Sniegocki, generally have deep “faith in human ingenuity, science, and
technology to save humanity from any possible human caused ecological disasters.”26 Other mainstream economists may
believe in government regulations and international agreements to solve problems, but they also fail to acknowledge the
need for a change in worldview, which a holistic solution demands.
Economists are partly correct in viewing the environmental crisis in terms of “market failures,” as results of the overuse (or
underuse) of goods relative to their “true” costs—and most particularly the fact that natural resources that should have a
“price” are considered “free,” or are drastically underpriced. A classic example is a factory polluting a nearby
neighborhood: it imposes costs on its neighbors, but the costs are “external” to the polluter insofar as it is not required to
concern itself with social and environmental responsibility. In situations involving negative externalities27 like polluted air,
economists maintain that some goods—clean air in this case—are “underpriced.” Market failure is the cumulative effect: it
is the overuse of clean air relative to its true value (or the cost of its pollution) that leads to the inefficient use of
resources. 
Accordingly, market failures can account for myriad environmental threats, including marine losses, deforestation,
desertification, freshwater system decline, loss of biodiversity, proliferation of toxic pollutants, acid rain, nitrogen excess in
fertilization, and so forth.28 The increasing scarcity of unpolluted natural resources, used or damaged by their use in
production processes without costs to the exploiting enterprise, reverses the claim that an invisible hand promotes
societal interests when individuals pursue their own interests. This naturally puts a blinding spotlight on the need for
reasonable regulation of markets and commerce, but the political process responsible for such regulations often fails due
to the corrupting influence of special interests, raising the question of Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will
guard the guardians?).29
Alternatively, one might think that a socioeconomic system based on central command explicitly appealing to cooperative
ideals, or the “visible” hand of the state rather than the invisible hand of the market, would be better equipped to
neutralize negative effects of growth. But in fact the opposite is true, as evidenced by the dismal environmental record of
communist countries, which some observers even blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union.30 Communism attempted to
achieve economy-wide cooperation through central planning, but it undermined the basis for such cooperation by its
systematic deskilling of work. Like other mechanized economies, communism ignores the intrinsic connections between
meaningful work and spiritually productive cooperation (Schumacherʼs second and third objectives of work). Special
interests, moreover, can take on even more corrupt and dysfunctional forms in industrial communism than in capitalism,

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because bureaucrats often conflate the interests of bureaucracy with the interests of society.31 The absence of a spiritual
dimension in communist political theory means that communism attempts to achieve a sort “Christian” charity without
relying on the inspiration of Christ, or any other revelation.32 But, explains Schumacher, charity without a spiritual
grounding is often fatal: “There is no supportable middle position. Those who want the Good Society, without believing in
God, cannot face the temptations of Machiavellianism.”33
In an industrialized world, communism and capitalism therefore have much more in common than their proponents admit:
both neglect Schumacherʼs second and third objectives of work, and the resulting loss of intrinsic meaning in production
and exchange promotes conflict rather than cooperation between workers, owners (whether individuals, corporations, or
the state), and consumers.34 Although communism opposes spiritual values much more directly than capitalism, both
systems undermine spiritual values. Without a change in the philosophical understanding of work, personal reform within a
system is rendered powerless to reform the system itself. Schumacher writes:
This is of decisive importance. It shows that appeals for good behavior and the teaching of ethical or spiritual principles,
necessary as they always are, invariably stay, as it were, inside the system and are powerless to alter it: unless and until
the preaching leads to significant new types of work in the physical world.35
Indeed, there is an increasingly urgent debate over whether the secular paradigm that has indirectly created the industrial
economic system can generate new technologies quickly enough to solve the accompanying crises related to the
environment. Whether technological “fixes” are possible depends on whether or not our worldview corresponds to the
nature of reality. If it does not, attempting to find a fix within the current paradigm can lead to a vicious downward cycle of
technologies, with each “cure” often leading to more and more adverse (and even catastrophic) “side effects.” If science
and technology are based on philosophical presuppositions that ignore higher levels of reality above observable
phenomena, and this does not correspond to the nature of reality, then both man and nature suffer unintended adverse
consequences.
Unfortunately, the current analytical tools of mainstream economic theory, imported into economics from Newtonian
mechanics, suppress the need for substantive philosophical debate by claiming to be ethically neutral.36 This application
of materialism ultimately promotes technical (market or incentive-based regulatory) solutions for moral problems,
reinforcing the “separate domain” argument and leaving no higher orders of reality to which to appeal about the spiritual
significance of production and exchange processes. This is a crucial point that theologians, philosophers, and other
intellectuals must keep in mind when carrying out dialogue with economists on the environmental crisis, for such
interconnections between economic theory, practice, and worldview are not made explicit in mainstream economic texts.
In short, the worldview that understands work in purely mechanical terms is responsible not only for economic production
that generates violence against man and nature, but also for the analytical tools that express and promote the same values
and theories that caused the environmental crisis to begin with.
Towards a Sacred Science
The Abrahamic elevation of humanity as the crown of creation is criticized by many environmentalists as forwarding an
“anthropocentric” view similar to that of mainstream economic theory, and hence they blame both for the current
environmental crisis.37 Deep ecology, for example, espouses the equality of man and other creatures, or an “eco-centric”
or “bio-centric” approach in place of an “anthropocentric” one.38 But such a critique misunderstands Abrahamic
teachings, which instill a theocentric, rather than purely anthropocentric, approach. Indeed, the Abrahamic traditions
conceive of humans not as owners of the earth, but in the dual role of Godʼs servants and vicegerents on earth. Nasr
writes:
[As a servant, one] must be passive towards God and receptive to the grace that flows from the world above. [As a
vicegerent, one] must be active in the world, sustaining cosmic harmony and disseminating the grace for which [one] is
the channel as a result of… being the central creature in the terrestrial order.39
In this sense, the status of vicegerent is not simply a privilege, but a responsibility and a trial, and failure to realize oneʼs
spiritual potential leads to disequilibrium.40 For faith traditions, nature is harmed when the vicegerent of God no longer
considers himself or herself the servant of God, a mistake that leads to the belief that humans are accidental beings not
created for a higher purpose.41 Anthropocentrism is dangerous because it usurps theocentrism, not because biocentrism
is a better alternative. Denying the centrality of humans only introduces further disequilibrium.
Fortunately, the intellectual and spiritual roots of the environmental crisis are receiving renewed attention. Discoveries in
physics during the last century challenge the notion of a strictly mechanistic universe, and fierce debate has ensued about
interpreting the new physics and about what should replace pre-quantum materialism.42 As one scholar puts it, we are in a
reality marketplace.43 The Catholic scientist and theologian Wolfgang Smith (who carried out extensive correspondence
with Muslim scholars such as Nasr) has attempted to integrate the findings of physics into higher orders of knowledge.44
Remarkably, Muslim philosopher-scientists such as Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037 CE), ‘Umar Khayyām (d. 1131 CE), and Naṣīr al-Dīn
Ṭūsī (d. 1274 CE) anticipated this solution centuries earlier in their holistic philosophies of nature. Mullā Śadrā (d. 1640)
developed their thought into a grand synthesis of Islamic theology, philosophy, and mysticism to provide the metaphysical

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foundation for a contemporary science capable of interpreting all natural phenomena through a spiritual perspective that
responds to the limitations of modern science without denying its factual discoveries.45 As the astronomer Robert Jastrow
put it, albeit in a non-Islamic context:
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the
mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted
by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.46
Indeed, it is ironic that René Descartes, who established the philosophical foundation for secular science by denying any
qualitative dimension to nature and creating an inseparable gulf between the subject who knows and the object that is
known, was a contemporary of Mullā Śadrā.
G.N. Tyrell illustrates the difference between such secular and sacred approaches to nature by comparing nature to a text.
He points out that a book, for example, is merely a colored shape to an animal, and any “higher significance a book may
hold lies above the level of its thought.”47 The animal is not wrong, since the book is a colored shape, but this does not
exhaust its meaning. Tyrell carries the analogy further:
A book, we will suppose, has fallen into the hands of intelligent beings who know nothing of what writing and printing
mean, but they are accustomed to dealing with the external relationships of things. They try to find out the “laws” of the
book, which for them mean the principles governing the order in which the letters are arranged…. They will think they have
discovered the laws of the book when they have formulated certain rules governing the external relationships of the
letters. That each word and each sentence expresses a meaning will never dawn on them because their background of
thought is made up of concepts which deal only with external relationships, and explanation to them means solving the
puzzle of these external relationships…. Their methods will never reach the grade [of significance] which contains the idea
of meanings.48
From the point of view of sacred science, the book of nature corresponds to sacred scripture, each page of which reveals
a truth, namely the “vestiges of God.”

From the point of view of sacred science, the book of nature corresponds to sacred scripture, each page of which reveals
a truth, namely the “vestiges of God” — vestigia Dei in traditional Christian thought, āyāt Allāh in Islamic thought, and
analogous concepts in other religious traditions.
When we apply this understanding to economics, we see that a sacred economics requires both a faith-based approach to
law, which can set the conditions for production, and also a set of sacred intellectual sciences, which, because they are
based on an integral vision of humanityʼs place in the cosmos, can inform the heart of production with a coherent vision of
humanityʼs hierarchy of spiritual and other needs. 
On the one hand, a religious approach to law would establish a minimum division of labor to provide necessary and useful
goods and services, asserting that some members of the community must practice each profession to fulfill the needs of
society. The division of labor is thus analogous to other collective duties, such as building orphanages and hospitals. If no
members in the community fulfill these needs, each member of the community is held spiritually accountable. The division
of labor is thus conceived of as a duty, not simply a pragmatic possibility.
On the other hand, a sacred approach to intellectual, productive, and artistic sciences would also be necessary, because
the norms and principles of art, which are also derived from the heart of revelation, would govern the making of things in a
sacred economy.49 From this point of view, human arts and crafts should communicate a spiritual truth and presence
analogous to nature, or Godʼs art. “The ethical aspect of work in this case embraces also the aesthetic,” writes Nasr.50
Thus, the production process is conceived as a spiritual discipline in which what one makes is not only a means of
livelihood but also a product of devotion. According to Ananda Coomaraswamy, “The artist is not a special kind of man,
but every man is a special kind of artist.”51
This approach to the making of things has always been closely wed to the spiritual practices of a given religious tradition,
because the necessary condition for this approach is consciousness of oneʼs mortality and complete dependence on the
Absolute, or “spiritual poverty” (faqr).52 Metaphysics and a sacred understanding of the sciences of nature apply to
everything in the productive sciences—from architecture and urban planning to the art of dress and personal living space.
The same applies to the practical sciences investigating everything from social organization to the treatment of the
environment. This link between work, spiritual education, and the character of our surroundings forged by the sacred
intellectual sciences is crucial to fulfilling the hierarchy of peopleʼs spiritual and other needs.53 Sacred economics
therefore depends on sacred science and is fatally incomplete without it. The most promising areas of the economy in
which to begin developing or applying such sciences are arguably holistic agriculture, medicine, architecture, and textiles,
as well as carpet and utensil production. Moreover, for equilibrium, sacred economics relies on the fact that all contingent
beings are interconnected in light of their common Source. In the traditional conception of society, there is a “corrective

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function of others, and of collectivities and communities as embodiments of ‘the neighborʼ—and in a more profound way
as representatives of the Divine ‘Otherʼ…”54 If traditional metaphysics and natural sciences correspond to the nature of
reality, then the individualism of mainstream economic theory is inconsistent with social and economic equilibrium.
The community, in this traditional understanding, transmits doctrines and practices on the division of labor, production,
and market exchange that allow each member to live in harmony with themselves, their fellow community members, and
nature. The Cartesian denial of the intrinsic interconnectedness of all things in modern science is once again at the root of
individualism in economic theory on one hand, and, on the other, the mechanized production and exchange processes that
produce the negative externalities harming nature.
Accordingly, we must recover the sacred intellectual heritages of the worldʼs great religious traditions if we would bring
forth holistic science and technology that can change our economic paradigm.55 It is important to point out that sacred
economics does not only apply to economies informed by spiritual principles; it also spells out the consequences of
violating these principles in secular economies, both at the individual and structural levels, including the aesthetic aspect
of work. If such spiritual principles are necessary for equilibrium—because injustice towards man and nature leads to
instability—then spiritual principles are the necessary starting point of economic analysis, because disequilibrium is
unintelligible in its own terms. Economics is therefore continuous with other practical sciences ranging from ethics to
politics and is not an independent domain separated from the rest of social life, as the “separate domain” approach of
modern economic theory claims. Sacred economics thus critiques both modern mainstream economic theory and
practice.56

Endnotes
1 See Daniel Dickinson, “Eco-Islam hits Zanzibar fishermen,” BBC News, February 17,
2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4271519.stm.
2 Ibid.
3 See for instance the Parent Collection, Center for the Study of World Religions on Religions of the World and
Ecology at: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1057.
4 See for instance Cielito Pascual, “Religion and Science Join Forces on the Environmental Crisis,” report on the
World Religions and Ecology Series sponsored by Harvard University, available online
at: http://www.shareintl.org/archives/environmental/en_cp_relig_sci.htm.
5 Available online at: http://fore.yale.edu/publications/statements/preserve
6 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 273.
7 See for instance Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1984), and Henry Veatch, For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical
Theory (Evanston:  Northwestern University Press, 1971).
8 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature, 6.
9 See James Cutsinger in “Paths of Return,” ch. 1, available online
at: http://www.cutsinger.net/pdf/paths_of_return.pdf
10 Wolfgang Smith, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions: A Critique of Contemporary Scientism (Tacoma,
WA: Angelico Press, 2013), 218. 
11 See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/27/most-glaciers-in-mount-everest-area-will-
disappear-with-climate-change-study. The same melting can be observed in Glacier National Park in Montana,
where over 120 of the 150 glaciers have disappeared, and the remaining glaciers have shrunk in area by two-thirds.
See http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/earths-atmosphere/geo-signs-thaw.
12 We thank James P. Buchanan for his comments and recommendations on “systems theory” in relation to Islamic
economics.  For an overview of this “systems theory” approach connecting events to underlying patterns,
structures, and worldviews, see David Peter Stroh, Systems Thinking for Social Change: A Practical Guide to Solving
Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results (White River Junction, VT:
Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015).
13 See for instance Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Islam and the Preservation of the Natural Environment,” lecture at
Georgetown University, Qatar, Center for International and Regional Studies, January 6, 2009, available online
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTHGZpu1rP4.
14 Robert Foley, Adamʼs Fallacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 1.
15 Quoted in E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper & Row, 1975),
24.
16 See E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered and A Guide for the Perplexed (New
York: Harper & Row, 1977).
17 E.F. Schumacher, Good Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 3-4.  As documented in the references in A Guide
for the Perplexed, it is important to note that Schumacher was greatly influenced by certain Muslim thinkers.

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18 As Nasr points out in an essay on Islamic work ethics, “Work carried out in accordance with the Sharīʿah is a form
of jihād and inseparable from the religious and spiritual significance associated with it.” Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam
in the Modern World: Challenged by the West, Threatened by Fundamentalism, Keeping Faith with Tradition (San
Francisco: HarperOne, 2011), 51.
19 Titus Burckhardt as cited in Yusuf Ibish, “Economic Institutions,” in R.B. Serjeant (ed.), The Islamic City (Paris:
UNESCO, 1980), 124-125.
20 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776, V.1.178.
21 Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), 95.
22 Michael J. Sandel, What Money Canʼt Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 9.
23 Ram Nidumolu, Two Birds in a Tree: Timeless Indian Wisdom for Business Leaders (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-
Koehler Publishers, 2013), 1, 16.
24 Such beauty is none other than the beauty of God manifesting itself within us through a combination of individual
effort and divine grace.
25 E.F. Schumacher, Good Work, 27-28.
26 John Sniegocki, “The Political Economy of Sustainability,” in Just Sustainability, eds. Christiana Peppard and
Andrea Vicini (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 59.
27 “Externalities” are natural resources that belong to humanity as a whole, but which a production process can use,
or damage, without paying for them, and without regard to the damage to nature and other peopleʼs capacity to
enjoy those resources—in the absence of laws and regulations prohibiting such use or damage. 
28  See for example Charles HRH The Prince of Wales, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World (New York:
HarperCollins, 2010), ch. 2.
29 Juvenal as quoted in Leonid Hurwicz, “But Who Will Guard the Guardians?” Nobel Prize Lecture in Economics,
available online at: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2007/hurwicz_lecture.pdf.
30 See for instance Joseph W. Dellapenna “Behind the Red Curtain: Environmental Concerns and the End of
Communism,” Villanova University School of Law Working Paper Series, 2010, no. 152.  Available online at:
http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/wps/art152/. And as Speth avers, “Its [communismʼs] authoritarian political
system and highly centralized economic planning produced one environmental disaster after another.” The Bridge at
the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2008), 58.
31 John Medaille, private correspondence, August 20, 2014.
32 For a brilliant analysis of how Marxʼs anti-theological critique of industrial capitalism actually depends upon a
theological critique despite his disavowal of it, see John Hughes, The End of Work:  Theological Critiques of
Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd, 2007).
33 E.F. Schumacherʼs lecture notes for his course “Crucial Problems of Modern Living” at London University in
1959–1960, quoted in Barbara Wood, E.F. Schumacher: His Life and Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 264.
Alisdair MacIntyre maintains that philosophical ethics is ultimately reducible to one of two options: the “way of
Aristotle” involving objective values based on the nature of things, which is consistent with a religious approach to
law and ethics, and the “way of Nietzsche” involving a subjective “will to power” that denies any nature to things.
MacIntyre argues that no middle position is intellectually sustainable.  See his After Virtue: A Study in Moral
Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), especially ch. 9.
34 See for instance Louis Putterman, Division of Labor and Welfare: An Introduction to Economic Systems (Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1990).
35 E. F. Schumacher, Age of Plenty: A Christian View (Edinburgh, UK:  St. Andrew Press, 1974), 12.
36 Waleed El-Ansary, “The Quantum Enigma and Islamic Sciences of Nature: Implications for Islamic Economic
Theory, Part I”: available online at:
https://www.academia.edu/4338350/The_Quantum_Enigma_and_Islamic_Sciences_of_Nature_Implications_for_Islamic_Economic_The
37 Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature, 218. 
38 Michael Colby,"Environmental Management in Development: The Evolution of Paradigms,"  Ecological
Economics 3: 199.
39 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Need for a Sacred Science (Albany, New York:  State University of New York Press, 1994),
134.
40 Othman Abd-ar-Rahman Llewellyn, “The Basis for a Discipline of Islamic Environmental Law,” in Islam and
Ecology: A Bestowed Trust, ed. Richard C. Foltz, Frederick M. Denny, and Azizan Baharuddin (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2003), 190. 
41 Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature, 272.
42 Because the idea that neither the atom nor the fundamental particles into which it can be decomposed have a
true self-identity may be difficult to conceive, Schroedinger puts it in the following emphatic terms: "And I beg to
emphasize this, and I beg you to believe it: It is not a question of our being able to ascertain the identity in some
instances and not being able to do so in others. It is beyond doubt that the question of “sameness,” of identity, really
and truly has no meaning." - Erwin Schrodinger, Science and Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1951), 17–18, cited in Wolfgang Smith, Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic
Belief (Peru, Illinois: Sherwood Sugden & Co., 1984), 50–51. Philipp Frank accordingly accounts for the crisis in
contemporary physics when he explains that at the turn of the twentieth century, “the decline of mechanistic

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physics was accompanied by a belief that the scientific method itself had failed to give us the ‘truth about the
universeʼ; hence nonscientific and even antiscientific tendencies gained momentum.” Philipp Frank, Modern Science
and its Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 2.
43 Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key (Peru, Illinois: Sherwood Sugden, 1995), i.
44 Smith, Quantum Enigma, supra n. 49.  The solution is to drop “Cartesian bifurcation,” the tenet that there is an
irreducible duality between subject and object in which only what can be measured in mathematical terms such as
extension is objective, and what cannot be so measured (such as color) is subjective.
45 These scholars make a crucial distinction between al-jism al-ţabī‘ī (natural body) in the “corporeal” world of
perceptible qualities and al-jism al-ta‘līmī (mathematical body) in the “physical” world of measured or measurable
quantities, which is central to Wolfgang Smithʼs approach to the quantum paradox. See Seyyed Hossein
Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy (New York: State
University of New York Press, 2006), 169–83, and ch. 12. For a detailed discussion and analysis of Seyyed Hossein
Nasrʼs views on Islamic science, technology and the environmental crisis, see Tarik Quadir, Traditional Islamic
Environmentalism: The Vision of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York: University Press of America, 2013).
46 Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), 107.
47 G. N. M. Tyrell, Grades of Significance (London: Rider & Co., 1930), as quoted in E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the
Perplexed, 52.
48 Ibid, 53.
49 See especially Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, What is Civilisation? And Other Essays (Great Barrington,
Massachusetts: Lindisfarne Press, 1989).
50 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam in the Modern World, 37.  He also notes that ḥusn, the root of iḥsān in Arabic, means
both “beauty” and “goodness,” whereas qubḥ means both “ugliness” and “evil.”
51 See Rama Coomaraswamy, ed., The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Bloomington, Indiana:  World Wisdom,
Inc., 2004), 124.
52 For the man who has acquired faqr, its immediate consequence is “detachment with regard to all manifested
things, for the being knows from then on that these things, like himself, are nothing, and that they have no
importance whatsoever compared with the absolute Reality.”  This detachment implies “indifference with regard to
the fruits of action… which enables the being to escape from the unending chain of consequence which follows from
this action.”  René Guénon, “Al-Faqr or ‘Spiritual Povertyʼ,” Studies in Comparative Religion 7/1 (Winter Issue, 1973),
16.
53 This linkage does not mean that that it is necessary to master the books articulating metaphysics and the
sciences of nature before such art can be produced. This is because of the importance of the oral tradition in
various religions, where metaphysics and the spiritual significance of nature do not have to be articulated in books
to be inwardly realized.
54 Patrick Laude, “One for All, All for One: The Individual and the Community in Traditional and Modern
Contexts,” Sacred Web, June 2003, 29. This analysis applies to the larger inter-faith community as well, which itself
has metaphysical significance. 
55 As previously noted, the modern world “has been shaped by its metaphysics, which has shaped its education,
which in turn has brought forth its science and technology.”  E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful, p. 120.
56 Thanks to the Renovatio editorial team, anonymous peer reviewers, and Darrell Blakeway for carefully reviewing,
editing, and/or providing valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Of course, all remaining errors are the
responsibility the author.

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