The Need For A Sacred Science

The meaning of a science rooted in the sacred, its contrast to modern science and its pertinence to us today.

In 2010, Nick Polizzi did something unimaginable. He assembled a group of eight desperately ill patients from around the world and brought them into the heart of the Amazon rainforest to put the mysterious medicines of native shamans to the test. The healing journey that unfolded would change their lives—and his own—forever. In The Sacred Science, we join Nick as he explores these primordial traditions and learns firsthand what it takes to truly heal ourselves of physical disease, emotional trauma, and the sense of “lostness” that so many of us feel in these modern times. We venture into a place where the ordinary rules we live by, even survival instincts, don’t apply—where “the only thing to do is to step forward and be ready for anything.” Nick is not a guru or shaman; he is an ordinary guy who pieced together an illuminating journey, one experience at a time. In this riveting true story, we’re shown the many layers that must be peeled away in order for us to find the truth of who we are and why we’re here. This book is a bridge between the flashy, fast-moving modern world and the forgotten ways of a healthier, earth-connected ancestral past. You’ll find practices and principles of native wisdom that you can put to use in your own life, and you’ll gain a new understanding of what it means to heal. In the end, what will become of the eight patients who set out on this path with Nick? Will the exotic jungle medicines and harrowing rites of passage destroy them or give them a new lease on life? Five will return with remarkable healing results. Two will return disappointed. One won’t return at all.

The meaning of a science rooted in the sacred, its contrast to modern science and its pertinence to us today.

The author of this book argues that a dialogue between the truths of science and religion could enhance the prospects of resolving the environmental crisis.

Sacred Science is an analysis of post-war discourses concerning health and illness. These discourses are an attempt to grasp the meaning of health in our modern human condition, and as such they provide both new insights into the genealogy of conceptualizations of both health and illness, but also serve as a viable hermeneutic summary of many important textual moments in the recent history of health studies, including Foucault, Gadamer, Illich, Sontag, and others. This book is the result of a phenomenological disquisition of the ideas employed by health scholars and philosophers, and its import rests both on its uniqueness in the relevant fields and its new ideas, including 'indefinitude', 'deontic facticity', and illness as the experience of the simultaneous 'inexistence' of both life and death.

Science and religion are often viewed as dichotomies. But although our contemporary society is often perceived as a rationalization process, we still need broad, metaphysical beliefs outside of what can be proven empirically. Rituals and symbols remain at the core of modern life. Do our concepts of science and religion require revitalization? Can science itself be considered a religion, a belief, or an ideology? Science's authority and prestige allows for little in the way of alternate approaches not founded in empirical science. It is not unusual to believe that technology and science will solve the world's fundamental problems. Has truth been colonized by science? Have scientific disciplines become so specialized and "operationally closed" that they have constructed barriers to other disciplines as well as the general public? The writers of this book set out to investigate whether the symbols of academia may in some cases take on a quality of sacrality, whether the rule of experts can be said to have the character of a "priesthood of knowledge", whether religion has a place in scientific contexts, and a selection of other questions concerning science and its relations to religious belief.