Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881-1955), French Roman Catholic priest, geologist, paleontologist, and philosopher-theologian, noted for his evolutionary interpretation of humanity and the universe and his insistence that such a view is compatible with Christianity.  Teilhard was born near Clermont-Ferrand and received a doctorate in paleontology in 1922 from the Sorbonne in Paris. He took a research position in China, where he remained, except for a few intervals, for almost 20 years, engaged in paleontological research and philosophical reflection. He was one of the participants in the excavation that discovered Peking man.  His major work, The Phenomenon of Man (1955), is an attempt to set forth a comprehensive evolutionary vision that addresses both scientific and religious interests. With the emergence of humanity, he argued, evolutionary development entered a new dimension. From the layer of living things covering the earth has emerged a mind layer surrounding the earth. This human consciousness generates increasingly complex social arrangements that in turn give rise to a higher consciousness. This process culminates in the convergence of the material and the spiritual into a superconsciousness.

• Gobi Desert : one of the solitudes where _The Divine Milieu_ was elaborated.
• 1904 - Departure to Egypt - 3 years of Magistracy, geological excursions.

Teilhard's philosophy of "neo-humanism," which unites a scientific appreciation of the reality of evolution as a compelling force of nature (i.e. cosmogenesis) with a metaphysical understanding of the human condition, has profound meaning for all those concerned with the future of humanity as we enter the 21st century. As stated by Sir Juilian Huxley, founder of the modern evolutionary synthesis, "Teilhard...effected a threefold synthesis-- of the material and physical world with the world of the mind and spirit; of the past with the future; and of variety with unity, the many with the one...". Teilhard's vision was truly ahead of his time  and is becoming more relevant with each passing day. The progressive optimism of his message regarding the future mental and spiritual evolution of humankind is a necessary palliative to the cynicism, parochialism and know-nothingism so rampant within modern society.

"No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at ever increasing speed which  envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us.    With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to  act or think otherwise than collectively."

                     Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
                     (_The Formation of the Noosphere_,1947)
 
  

"The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth."  Teilhard de Chardin passed away a full ten years before James Lovelock ever proposed the "Gaia Hypothesis" which suggests that the Earth is actually a living being, a colossal biological super-system. Yet Chardin's writings clearly reflect the sense of the Earth as having its own autonomous personality, and being the prime center and director of our future -- a strange attractor, if you will -- that will be the guidingforce for the synthesis of humankind.

The phrase 'Sense of the Earth' should be understood to mean the passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the thinking part of life ever further onward. The only truly natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth. . . .The sense of Earth is the irresistable pressure which will come at the right moment to unite them (humankind) in a common passion.
 
 

To this end, he suggested that the Earth in its evolutionary unfolding, was growing a new organ of consciousness, called the noosphere.The noosphere is analogous on a planetary level to the evolution of the cerebral cortex in humans. The noosphere is a "planetary thinking network" -- an interlinked system of consciousness  and information, a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication. At the time of his writing, computers of any merit were the size of a city block, and the Internet was, if anything, an element of speculative science fiction. Yet this evolution is indeed coming to pass, and with a rapidity, that in Gaia time, is but a mere passage of seconds. In these precious moments, the planet is developing her cerebral cortex, and emerging into self-conscious awakening. We are indeed approaching the Omega point that Teilhard de Chardin was so excited about.

Teilhard says that mind and matter cannot be separated, that there exists only a "mind-matter" analogous to the space-time of the relativists. All evolution--which Teilhard calls cosmogenesis--is the history of the increasing complexity of matter, from elementary particles to human society. At each level of complexity the "inside of things" is revealed in properties that we call life and (later on) reflective consciousness. Each stage sees the mind liberating itself from matter. Pushed to its logical limits, the law of complexity consciousness (the more complex a system, the more conscious it is) leads to the integration of all consciousnesses in a single God, the point of convergence of all evolution.

Once and once only in the course of its planetary existence has the earth been able to envelop itself with life. Similarly once and once only has life succeeded in crossing the threshold of reflection. For thought as for life there has been just one season. And we must not forget that since the birth of thought man has been the leading shoot of the tree of life. That being so, the hopes for the future of the noosphere (that is to say, of biogenesis, which in the end is the same as cosmogenesis) are concentrated exclusively upon him as such. How then could he come to an end before his time, or stop, or deteriorate, unless the universe committed abortion upon itself, which we have already decided to be absurd?

In its present state, the world would be unintelligible and the presence in it of reflection would be incomprehensible, unless we supposed there to be a secret complicity between the immense and the infinistesimal to warm, nourish and sustain to the very end -  by dint of chance, contingencies and the exercise of free choice - the consciousness that has emerged between the two. It is upon this complicity that we must depend. 'Man is irreplacable'. Therefore, however improbable it might seem, 'he must reach the goal', not necessarily, doubtless, but infallibly.   What we should expect is not a halt in any shape or form, but an ultimate progress coming at its biologically appointed hour; a maturation and a paroxysm leading even higher into the Improbable from which we have sprung. It is in this direction that we must extrapolate man and hominisation if we want to get a forward glimpse of the end of the world."

• jangle pop track _It's The End Of The World As We Know It_ MP3 by REM off of _Document_ 12" (1987)

Time according to Bergson and Teilhard. Bergson and Teilhard place the direction ofevolution over that of entropy . According to Bergson, "all our analyses teach us that life is an effort to climb the slope that matter descends." Teilhard measures the duration of evolution by the series of transformations that lead matter, life, and society toward states of higher complexity. "We are already prepared to observe that life, taken in its entirety, manifests itself as a current opposed to entropy. ...Life, contrary to the leveling play of entropy, is the methodical construction of an organization that ceaselessly grows bigger in the most improbable way." For Teilhard space-time takes the shape of a cone: the point of the cone is the

outcome of cosmogenesis; God is Omega, the end.

"Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, as  systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforth if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow."

• LET ME EXPLAIN
• THE APPEARANCE OF MAN
• THE DIVINE MILIEU
• THE FUTURE OF MAN
• HOW I BELIEVE
• HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE
• LETTERS FROM A TRAVELLER
• LETTERS TO LEONTINE ZANTA
• THE MAKING OF A MIND
• MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE
• THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
• THE VISION OF THE PAST
• WRITINGS IN TIME OF WAR
• BUILDING THE EARTH

"And now, as a germination of planetary dimensions, comes the thinking layer which over its full extent develops and intertwines its fibres, not to confuse and neutralise them but to reinforce them in the living unity of a single tissue."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. The Human Phenomenon, 1955

            Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. The Heart of Matter, 1950

Teilhard is the only hope that catholic and christian organizations have of redeeming their vile and insipid history of intolerance, mass killings and genocide.  he is the only link to an outdated thought system that has any relevance.  he was ostracized by both the scientific and religious communities, which makes perfect sense.

• "Let us lift our vision high enough to dominate the problem."
• "The time will come when Humankind will have to make a choice between suicide and adoration."
  

track _O.O.B.E._ by The Orb off of _U.F.O.rb_ CDx2(1992)

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