The Sacred and Technology

An Interview with Bronislaw Szerszynski

Abstract

Bronislaw Szerszynski’s Nature, Technology and the Sacred (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) offers a highly original argument that seeks to reorient our understanding of the emergence of the distinctive meanings of technology and nature in the West. More specifically, Szerszynski argues for the primacy of the sacred in the interpretation of nature and technology. Refusing the omnipresence of ‘desacralisation’ and ‘the secular’ in discourse on ecology and technological development, Szerszynski sees in the disenchantment of nature and the restlessness of technological innovation one more alteration in the theme of the sacred.

Although not offered as a theological argument, the primacy of the sacred in Szerszynski’s account suggests that his wide-ranging interrogation of nature and technology is amenable to theological analysis.

Shortly after the publication of Nature, Technology and the Sacred, Ecotheology Guest Editor, Peter Manley Scott, interviewed its author, Bronislaw Szerszynski, most especially to explore what ecotheologians interested in technology might learn from his thesis.