Just finished reading this classic book. I have often wondered why it has such an almost cult-like following, and I can now say that it is not from lucidity of writing nor from importance/novelty of ideas, since it has little to no discernible amount of either.

While reading it, I kept thinking of that great line from the Netflix show, “The Good Place,” when Michael, who can read the entirety of the world's literature in about an hour, is sitting down with Chidi talking about Chidi’s life work, a very long and convoluted book manuscript on moral philosophy:

-tChidi: Aren't there some parts worth salvaging?

-tMichael: Honestly, man, I don't even know. I mean that thing is unreadable. I literally learned what headaches were because that thing gave me a headache.

Teilhard’s is one of the abstruse books I have ever read. Worse, unlike some other unnecessarily abstruse writing, which, given enough time and energy to dissect and distill the complexity, has nuggets of gold to validate the struggle, in Teilhard’s case by contrast, most every time I struggled to find the nugget, dissected and understood a complex passage, all I found was tautology, or other nonsense.

It was not entirely without value, however. He does have something valuable to say about love, for example, when he talks about its role in what he calls the Omega: that

-tlove “dies in contact with the impersonal and the anonymous.” So true.

His description of the radial energy versus tangential energy, is mildly interesting, but so poorly articulated that there is really no telling what he means.

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[...]Ἡ ἀγάπη κάτω ἀπ᾿ ὅλες τὶς ἀποχρώσεις της, δὲν εἶναι τίποτε ἄλλο πράγμα, οὔτε τίποτε λιγότερο, ἀπὸ τὸ λίγο ἢ πολὺ ἄμεσο ἐντυπωμένο ἴχνος, στὴν καρδιὰ τοῦ στοιχείου ἀπὸ τὴν ψυχικὴ συνάντηση με το Σύμπαν. Καὶ νὰ λοιπόν, ἂν δὲν ἀπατιέμαι, ἡ φωτεινὴ γραμμὴ ποὺ μπορεῖ νὰ μᾶς βοηθήσει νὰ δοῦμε πιο καθαρὰ γύρω μας. Υποφέρουμε κι ἀνησυχούμε διαπιστώνοντας πὼς οἱ σύγχρονες απόπειρες τῆς ἀνθρώπινης συλλογικοποίησης δὲν καταλήγουν, ἀντίθετα στις προβλέψεις τῆς θεωρίας καὶ στὴν προσδοκία μας, παρὰ σ᾿ ἕναν ἐξευτελισμὸ καὶ σὲ μιὰ σκλαβιὰ τῶν συνειδήσεων.[...]

[...]Ἡ ἀγάπη, ἔλεγα, πεθαίνει στ��ν ἐπαφὴ τοῦ ᾿Απρόσωπου καὶ τοῦ ᾿Ανώνυμου. Ακριβῶς ἐπίσης ἀλάνθαστα, εξευτελίζεται μὲ τὴν ἀπομάκρυνση μέσα στὸ χῶρο, — καὶ πολὺ περισσότερο ἀκόμα μὲ τὴ διαφορὰ μέσα στο Χρόνο. Γιὰ ν' ἀγαπούμαστε, εἶναι οὐσιῶδες νὰ συνυπάρχουμε. Ποτέ, κατά συνέπεια, σε θαυμάσια καὶ ἂν εἶναι ἡ προβλεφθεῖσα ὄψη της, τὸ Ωμέγα δὲ θὰ μποροῦσε ἀκόμα καὶ ἁπλῶς νὰ ἰσοσταθμίσει τὸ παιχνίδι τῶν ἔλξεων καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπινων ἀπωθήσεων ἂν δὲν ἐνεργοῦσε μὲ ἴση δύναμη, δηλαδὴ μὲ τὴν ἴδια ὑφή (στόφα) τῆς πλησιότητας. Στην ἀγάπη, ὅπως σὲ κάθε ἄλλο εἶδος ἐνέργειας, εἶναι σ᾿ αὐτὸ τὸ ὑπάρχον δεδομένο ποὺ οἱ γραμμές τῆς δύνασης πρέπει νὰ κλείνονται σε κάθε στιγμή. Κέντρον ιδανικό, Κέντρον αὐτοδύναμο: τίποτε ἀπ' ὅλ᾽ αὐτὰ δὲν ἀρκεῖ. Σὲ ἐνεργὸ καὶ πραγματικὴ Νοόσφαιρα, Κέντρο πραγματικὸ καὶ ἐνεργό. Γιὰ νὰ εἶναι ὑπέρτατα ελκυστικό, τὸ Ωμέγα πρέπει νὰ εἶναι ἤδη ὑπέρτατο παρόν.[...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_T...

This book is a tough one. About half of the time one can't help but think: 'what did this guy smoke?', but at the same time it is really quite fascinating. His alternative view of evolution is at times a lot better than the prevailing, reductionist account of it. However, the scientific details both on consciousness and radial and tangential energy do not seem to be accurate (although I am not a physicist, so I'm guessing here), turning the whole story into something of a myth rather than science. Also, his writing is a bit unwieldy, very French.

In short: good in the thinking department, not super good in the science one.

This book intends to describe the past and future evolution
of life. Many of the scientific concepts expressed in the
first half of the book have been superseded by more recent
developments.

For me, the main interesting concept in the book is the
assertion that human consciousness is an aspect of
evolution. Also that evolution has a goal, i.e. the increasing
complexity of human consciousness (called noosphere) which
will culminate in the final super-humanized form (p. 259)
which the author calls the Omega point.

Since the author was trained as a priest, it would have been
helpful if he had given insight as to why/how religion
plays such a large part in human consciousness.

The thing about reading science books from times gone past (in this case 6+ decades ago) is that the science, especially if it's in a fast-moving field like evolution, is frequently out of date. The book's wrong, is what I'm saying. That doesn't mean it lacks value from a history-of-science standpoint, though. And really, that's a thematically accurate judgement. Science is a self-correcting method, and it's only by exploring dead ends that we can establish that they are in fact dead ends, and get on to something closer to accurate. I liked reading this book because it was interesting, but three stars shouldn't be taken as endorsement of accuracy.

That inaccuracy is spurred on not only by the state of knowledge at time of writing, but by the author's religious bias. de Chardin was a scientist, but he was also a priest, and he admits himself, towards the end of the book, that had his faith not been what it was he very likely wouldn't have come up with this theory (which, naturally acts in support of said faith). Source of inspiration doesn't necessarily prove a theory wrong - the structure of benzene, for instance, was deduced from a dream of the Ouroboros snake - but the bias is there, and it's influencing the science. de Chardin's theory, in a nutshell, is that evolution is rising to the point of perfecting humanity's spiritual state, and though he doesn't bring Christianity into the book directly, not until the very end, its influence is clearly there from the beginning, and it's causing de Chardin to gloss over steps. One of his frequent rhetorical flourishes is to state something like "We are agreed that..." at which point I stop and say aloud, "I am not agreed!" because he hasn't put forward sufficient evidence to convince me, but there it is. Science is method and experiment. He puts forward no method. He describes no experiment. The thesis of his book is "this is what I have observed, and here is how I have reasoned that my observations can fit in with my religion". Again, it's an interesting theory... but he doesn't have the evidence.

Though many people have found Teilhard's ideas profound, to me this book just seems like a somewhat poetic account of cosmic and biological evolution, with some highly speculative metaphysical ideas tacked on to the end. Theologically speaking, Teilhard's remarks about evil are very problematic, since he seems to reduce evil to simply a natural part of the evolutionary process, without any concept of a historical Fall, human guilt, and the need for forgiveness; it is very understandable why the Catholic Church hierarchy sought to censor his writings during his lifetime. I am not a scientist, but my understanding is that Teilhard's ideas have not been well received by the scientific community either. Teilhardism just seems to me an expression of infatuation with the theory of evolution, without much real substance.

A classic in the philosophy genre by a lauded 20th century thinker. A cornerstone of my library and of my thinking.

Klassieker

Essential reading for anyone interested in evolution, theology, or philosophy in general. I personally approached it more interested in its spiritual concepts, so I found a fair portion of the middle of the text rather slow and inaccessible due to its focus on the scientific specifics of evolution (details that are probably outdated today anyway, which doesn't help). But there are enough interesting lines, images, and trains of thought throughout to make the whole read worthwhile, and the last third of the book in particular gets into some really interesting (if brazenly biased) spiritual territory.

In my opinion, Teilhard is at his best when he explores overtly the spiritual reality of mankind, describing it with a sense of optimism and purpose while couching it in the evolutionary framework that he presents (and, to be fair, that is essentially the crux of the entire book, it just gets lost in the mix at times). Even when he wears his Christianity on his sleeve (which, while definitely a flaw in his otherwise fairly comprehensive system of thought, is kind of cute), it is apparent that he has nothing but the best at heart for his species: a sense of spiritual well-being and a connection with something greater (i.e. The Omega Point in this case--a head-scratcher of a notion, but it almost seems like one of the more reasonable (albeit still arbitrary) defenses for Jesus-as-the-divine-entering-into-the-world that I've heard). Much like Kierkegaard, Teilhard (what's with these -ard guys anyway?) constructs a wildly intriguing system of ideas around his faith system, and in doing so gets at some really important truths while completely missing out on others.

I would recommend this book with the qualification that recent integral philosophers present a more tenable approach to its key points (i.e. the "within" of things, evolution as increasing consciousness, etc.) and a more comprehensive view of evolution in general.

Essential reading for anyone the least bit curious about the nature of reality and the human animal's place in it. A key conclusion, one I happen to share—that humanity is tethered to the planet in an evolutionary, energetic and spiritual manner making expansion beyond the sphere to the stars extremely unlikely, at least in our present form—undermines much of the world stage narrative about the viability of space travel. Nobody is going to live on Mars, but the earthly journey of interiority to a place of higher evolutionary understanding, even perhaps a kind of future planetary 'singularity' event, is more than possible.

Jung comme Teilhard de Chardin négligent l’origine et la finalité des concepts qu’ils pensent découvrir, alors qu’ils ne font que les renommer. En détournant le peu qu’ils en saisissent, ils finissent par les réadapter aux besoins de leur époque, confirmant au passage leurs propres conclusions. Ainsi, Jung ne s’intéresse à la supraconscience que pour conforter son concept d’inconscient collectif, et Teilhard ne s’intéresse à l’unité transcendante que pour valider sa vision évolutionniste du christianisme. Cette inversion du principe soumet des concepts métaphysiques à des orientations totalement matérialistes, comme la « planétarisation » chez Chardin qui devient le substrat théorique à la mondialisation et la psychanalyse jungienne qui alimente les illusions du développement personnel.