Its objective is to show how the transmitted, intellectual, and physical sciences are related and unified within the framework of metaphysics, as traditionally defined.
According to this perspective, scientia sacra is synonymous with metaphysics, which is seen not as a branch of philosophy but rather what the Sufis call ma'rifa or gnostic knowledge—the ultimate goal of which is the knowledge of "the Real".
This viewpoint holds that God, the Principle or the One, is the Ultimate Reality—who is absolute, eternal, infinite, and necessary but whose knowledge lies beyond the reach of sense perception and reason.
The notion of scientia sacra may be traced back to Islamic intellectual tradition, particularly the ideas of Ibn Arabi and Suhrawardi.
This was further explored in modern times by the French metaphysician René Guénon and others, including Frithjof Schuon and Titus Burckhardt.
However, the concept was most notably conceptualized in contemporary language by the Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his 1981 Gifford Lectures, published in the same year as Knowledge and the Sacred.
Such knowledge is acquired through intellection, which Suhrawardi defines as a sort of vision that allows humans to perceive archetypes in the imaginal realm (alam al-mithal, or mundus imaginalis in Henry Corbin's terminology).
[7] The notion of scientia sacra may also be traced back to Ibn Arabi's concept of "intuitive science", which he viewed as knowledge of the Truth, of the reality of all things.
In this context, Nasr denounces....Western societies that are obsessed with developing a scientific knowledge anchored in a quantitative approach to reality and in the domination of nature, which results in its pure and simple destruction.
According to Nidhal Guessoum, Seyyed Hossein Nasr "almost single-handedly" developed the concept of sacred science, which was afterwards embraced and upheld by a number of his followers.
[note 1] Nasr developed his notion of scientia sacra in his book Knowledge and the Sacred, originally published in 1981, which contained his Gifford lectures delivered in the same year.
[6] According to Nasr, scientia sacra – or knowledge of Reality – is "at the heart of every revelation and is the center of that circle which encompasses and defines tradition.
[18] The knowledge of the Principle which is at once the absolute and infinite Reality is the heart of metaphysics while the distinction between the levels of universal and cosmic existence, including both the macrocosm and the microcosm, are like its limbs.
In line with premodern philosophy, it upholds that "the spiritual has a higher ontological status over the material because the former is taken to reveal the divine and the latter to conceal it".
[20] In Nasr's view, scientia sacra perceives the cosmos not as a separate reality, but rather as a "manifestation and theophany" of the "Divine Essence".
None of the sciences based on sense perception and reason can pierce this veil, and it is thus only by means of sacred knowledge that the Ultimate Reality can be apprehended.
This demonstrates Nasr's Platonic resemblance in that it preserves the notion of primordial knowledge and truth contained within man's being.
Nasr considers scientia sacra, which deals with the Real, as the supreme form of knowledge that lies at the heart of traditional sciences.
According to this view, whereas modern science pursues objectives such as accuracy and confirmation by repeatability, scientific thinking in Islamic civilisation considered nature as sacred and consequently gave priority to values such as purpose, meaning and beauty.
[33]However, Nasr does not dismiss modern science, which he believes "is legitimate if kept within the boundaries defined by the limitations of its own philosophical premises concerning the nature of physical reality as well as its epistemologies and methodologies.
[35]Traditional civilizations that nurtured sacred sciences emphasized on the divine origin of the cosmos and maintained a hierarchy between the absolute and the relative, the eternal and the temporal, the necessary and the contingent.
Nature, on the other hand, incorporates both the principles of change and permanence and alludes to a "big picture" in which all of its components are viewed as constituting a meaningful unity and harmony.
[36] The Hungarian philosopher Béla Hamvas, who was influenced by René Guénon and his traditionalist school, undertook a study of various religious and spiritual traditions from around the world, which he compiled under the title Scientia Sacra.