One of the most influential philosophical discourses on the relationship of modern science to Islam can be found in the Risale-i Nur of Said Nursi (d. 1960). Nursi sought to simultaneously revive both religious faith and scientific progress in the Ottoman Muslim world, and his proposal of a sort of ‘sanctification of nature’ to that end has been the subject of some scholarly enquiry. Besides reframing the spiritual practice of tefekkür to incorporate meditation on the natural world, Nursi saw that the practical application of modern scientific enquiry could potentially be harnessed within a religious philosophical framework. This paper explores, by way of anthropological fieldwork, the reception and application of Said Nursi’s philosophy of science in the contemporary Hizmet Movement in Turkey. Particularly, it explores the philosophical justification for engagement as religious actors in the technical sciences, an aspect of modern scientific culture in the Muslim world that is often assumed to be largely pragmatic and economically motivated, and divorced from any religious meaning of its own. This paper challenges that assumption, firstly by drawing on the text of the Risale-i Nur and the writings of Fethullah Gülen, and secondly by presenting data from fieldwork carried out in Hizmet scientific and educational communities in Turkey. Primarily, it shows how practitioners within the movement derive spiritual meaning from the practical application of science, namely in the fields of medicine and engineering, by positing a link to the duty and purpose of mankind as khalifa of Allah on earth. This observation is situated within a wider ethnographic framework which traces the activities and evolving priorities of the Hizmet Movement in the field of science research and education, focusing on its emergence as an actor in the lucrative field of private higher education in Turkey in recent years.