Human Image : World Image - The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology

Denise Harvey, June 2004. Paper Back. New. Very much a companion book to both <i>The Eclipse of Man and Nature</i> and <i>The Sacred In Life and Art</i>, <i>Human Image: World Image</i> shares with both a tendency toward maximalism and a disarming disdain for modern science. Sherrard's driving message here is that before we can effectively deal with ecological problems we have to change our world image, which means ''unless our own evaluation of ourselves, and of what constitutes the true nature of our being, changes, the way we treat the world about us will not change either.'' In short, modern man has forgotten who he is, insisting that he can and must examine the material world as if it is independent of the invisible, metaphysical reality beyond it. Sherrard posits that contemporary scientific theory is not, in fact, neutral or value-free as we have come to believe, and that this scientific mentality continues to erode our sense of the sacred. We must recover not only our self-image as sacred beings but also our relationship with nature (our theoanthropocosmic vision) so that the two, in concord, can be restored to their sacred realities. Sherrard traces his anthropologic and cosmologic journey from the Renaissance through the attempted reconciliations of modern science and religion by the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin and the poet Oskar Milosz (uncle of Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz). His conclusion involves an almost rhapsodic declaration of the Mother of God as the intrinsic bridge between the spiritual and material natures of all creation. 242 pp.