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The author, referred to by Huston Smith as one of the major intellects of our day, in this work traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view that sees human beings as alienated from nature, and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by human beings. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions.