In philosophy of religion, desacralization or secularization of knowledge is the process of separation of knowledge from its divine source. The process marks a paradigmatic shift in understanding of the concept of knowledge in the modern period. It has rejected the notion knowledge has spiritual and metaphysical foundations and is therefore related to the sacred. Although it is a recurrent theme among the writers of the Traditionalist school that began with René Guénon, a French mystic and intellectual who earlier spoke of "the limitation of knowledge to its lowest order", the process of desacralization of knowledge was most notably surveyed, chronicled and conceptualized by Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his 1981 Gifford Lectures that were later published as Knowledge and the