This was great reading in the first and third parts of the book…though the middle almost killed me with its technicality.

In the early 20th century, Pierre Teilhard became a forerunner in integrating evolution with a theistic worldview, but the greatest import of his work was that he took a dead-eye shot at predicting where naturalistic evolution was heading. Advancing beyond mere rosy humanism, Teilhard fervently believed in the eons-long progress of hominization—the coming to being of humanity. He expresses god-like patience by saying, “After all, half a million years, perhaps even a million, were required for life to pass from the pre-hominids to modern man—should we now start wringing our hands because, less than two centuries after glimpsing a higher state, modern man is still at [war] with himself?” This seems to be the real crux of the book. The spiraling paths of progress may not advance much in our lifetime, but the history of life in the universe has shown that progress is all the history of biological development has ever revealed. Speculate rather, how can there NOT be progress…unless life ceases to be altogether? We have no precedent for progress NOT being made in some corner of the universe. And while this development may appear to leave some species behind while focusing on a tiny growing tip of the universe, Teilhard develops the idea early that nothing in the universe is really detached from anything else. If we can accept that proposition, which he spends some time in constructing, then we can accept seeing (or being) an ostensibly forgotten tail, while the rest moves ‘ahead’. Absolutely no pun intended.

Teilhard writes to buttress hope in a ‘secret complicity between the infinite and the infinitesimal to warm, nourish and sustain to the very end…the consciousness that has emerged between the two. It is upon this complicity that we must depend’. Teilhard marvels at this ‘complicity’—what is it that causes objects in space, big and small, to attract to each other? He theorizes somewhat courageously that even the basic attraction of objects in the universe towards each other, to which we apply the name of gravity, is a type of materially evidenced ‘love’. This may sound romantic and completely absurd to our western sensibility, but as Dr. Sten Odenwald, astronomer at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, stated on his website astronomycafe.net in reply to a question about our knowledge of gravity, “We don't really understand ANYTHING about our physical world at the deepest level, such as why does gravity exist?” Why couldn’t love, enlarged to subsume the law of mutual attraction that binds the universe together, seek also the unification and concord of human spirits? Would that really pose a problem in a cohesive theory of physical/relational life? To assume that love is merely an emotion, and that humanity is so different a phenomenon as the rest of nature, is to miss the mark. Teilhard boldly reasons, “The only universe capable of containing the human person is an irreversibly ‘personalizing’ universe.” And so the universe is, eo ipso, irreversibly personal. Shouldn’t that logically establish that human love has its root in a larger universal principle that has always existed, like everything else, from the beginning, in what Teilhard calls “an obscure and primordial way”?

Teilhard’s conception of an Omega Point of absolute human union (globalized love) is entirely pertinent in our culture of social networking. It represents the acme of human connections: relationship to the nth degree in what he calls the ‘noosphere’ (mind-sphere), a matrix of highly concentrated and involuted communication—or ‘inter-thinking’ as Julian Huxley put it in the intro. Modern globalization may be bringing us closer in the next century to Teilhard’s reckoning quicker than he could have imagined. When he adduced that ‘totalized love’ would be ‘impossible’ to envision by mere rational projection, it suddenly struck me, by all the signs of instant communication and complex social networking, as very possible indeed. Distance doesn’t dilute dreams…only our grasp of them. Once again, doesn’t all human progress signify the eventual emergence (evolution) of a perfect union? “A universal love is not only psychologically possible; it is the only complete and final way in which we are able to love.” This seems to me what we all want, what is woven into our religions and our highest technological/scientific aspirations, and yet some will laugh at it as if it was a silly dream. But nature has taught us to hope.

His views on the awakening human mind and self-awareness were certainly intriguing. I’ve always thought that the idea of a universe ‘groping’ towards consciousness and unified fulfillment through eons of evolutive progress is very romantic. The impression isn’t necessarily that God is waking up through a pantheistic becoming , but that the mind of God is somehow imprinted and bound together with the material/psychical world while extending beyond it (panentheism). The goal of awakening and full being is included in his Omega Point.

I was a little disappointed with the chapter “The Christian Phenomenon”, which seemed to toss his original ideas and intellectual tour de force into the catch-all, domestic doctrines of orthodox Catholicism. It was as if he was offering something truly novel, only to conclude with a unworthy bow, “The Church was right all along.” Uh, bait-and-switch anyone? Of course, knowing the history of Teilhard’s censorship by the church, this contriteness may have been what got the book in print after all. Now, I understand Teilhard’s trying to harmonize the symbolic content of religion with the flat data of science, but I’m pretty sure his work-a-day science did a good enough job paying tribute to his religious beliefs, possibly outstripping them a tad. By his own admission, his ideas weren’t meant to be taken as strictly science, but rather an ‘interiorisation of matter’, even leading some to wonder if he had been leading them “through facts, through metaphysics, or through dreams.” To which I think Teilhard would cheerily reply, ‘Yes.’ Criticizing any claim to pure objectivity he reminds us, “There is less difference than people think between research and adoration.”

I have a feeling that the thoughts and ideas introduced and reinforced by this book will be with me for a while. The more it sits with me, the more it makes a deeper change. As with every book I read, if you would like a copy of a few pages of great lines from the book, send me a message and I’ll get it to you. It’s great fodder for thought and discussion.

Very deep. The introduction and final notes were really all I could understand, but I am very happy to have read it.

Una lectura muy estimulante desde el punto de vista filosófico y especulativo, aunque sus premisas no nos puedan parecer acertadas. Conseguir algo así tiene mucho mérito.

What a book! Difficult in some places, beautiful in others. Teilhard de Chardin is both deeply scientific and deeply spiritual, and in working to synthesize everything into a kind of cosmology of life, he makes a compelling case that evolution is ‘headed somewhere.’ I think it’s worth reading for the description of evolution and the tree of life alone, because he really gives you a sense of the scope, complexity and richness of life that’s breathtaking. On a philosophical level a lot of what he says echos what’s called process philosophy or philosophy of organism. High-level: for mind to evolve, there must be some rudimentary form of mind present in all matter, as a property of matter itself. Think of reality, then, in terms of experiences and becoming (process) rather than in terms of substance and being (stasis). Some people will have an adverse reaction to this way of thinking or want to write it off as a kind of weird animism but there’s a whole line of philosophers that have worked and continue to work in this vein... plus I don’t see anybody else elegantly solving mind/body dualism! But I digress... I didn’t find this book easy to read (I think a combination of the fact of being translated from French and being heady and conceptual), but it was worth the slog and re-reading certain passages to try and get there with him.

Others have noted the datedness of the science, implying that it’s therefore ‘wrong.’ In places that’s true, but in others everything holds up quite well. And I bet many of the science books we’re all reading today will likely be “wrong” in 70 years too! Science itself continuously evolves and self-corrects, and over a long enough timescale whole paradigms change.

Here, what he is trying to do is anticipate a new paradigm, and we might not even be there *yet*. He is progressing beyond the merely descriptive “what” of scientific description toward a speculative “why” - why do branches of the tree of life tend toward greater ‘cerebralization’ over time? Where is the increasing intensity of consciousness headed? What happens to nature and evolution when conscious beings are in the drivers’ seat? It’s every bit as interesting as it sounds.

I had heard of this book from a variety of sources-- Stephen Penrose, Lee Smolin, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson and Arthur C. Clarke, (all authors I enjoy) all mentioned it at one point or another. It puts itself forward as a scientific work, but it isn't that, really-- more a kind of idea for a science fiction story, written in a self-important, verbose way that skips over all the hard work of proving any of its points.
The basic idea is this. From the big bang through the organization of matter and worlds through the evolution of life and eventually of man, the laws of nature have led to ever increasing complexity and self-representation or consciousness. That is now continuing through the building of a worldwide network of communication, which will become more and more dense and gain a consciousness of its own, leading to all humanity evolving towards a unity and richness of consciousness he calls "The Omega Point" to avoid saying "God."
These ideas must have seemed more radically new when he wrote the book in the 1930s, but the idea of the net itself becoming conscious, or the eventual evolution of mankind into a collective soul have become tropes in science fiction. Perhaps that's partially due to his influence. I had gathered that much from the references, and I didn't get much more out of reading the book itself. It describes some scientific phenomenon, then describes what De Chardin thinks its means, then goes on as if De Chardin has proved that's what it means, which we are supposed to just take on his authority as a scientist or a Jesuit or something.
Not to say there isn't a certain poetry to his ideas, or his way of expressing them. Evolution really does seem to have a direction towards increasing intelligence, complexity, and a kind of fractal infolding. Life does seem to resist decay and promote the growth of beauty. But there's a difference between poetic connection between ideas, and logical connection between ideas, that he just doesn't seem to get.

IL FENOMENO UMANO (1a edizione, giugno 1968, Il Saggiatore-Mondadori Editore)

Padre Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (Ourcines (F) 1881 – New York (USA) 1955), gesuita, teologo, filosofo e paleontologo/antropologo.
Immerso nelle grandi vicende del secolo scorso, così La cugina Marguerite lo descrive: «Per Pierre Teilhard la guerra fu, probabilmente, l’avvenimento decisivo della sua vita…”. (Pierre Teilhard De Chardin: Genesi di un pensiero. Lettere dal fronte, 1914-1919. Feltrinelli, 1966).
Evoluzionista e animista, e in quanto tale un po’ “proibito”, gira tutto il mondo alla ricerca di dati e partecipa alla scoperta de “L’uomo di Pechino” (Homo erectus pekinensis, 1923-1927, 680.000 anni B.P.)
Il fenomeno umano, (1938-1940; aggiunte nel 1947-1948) pubblicato postumo (1955) è, secondo gli studiosi di P. De Chardin, la sua opera principale.
Il postulato di partenza è la “stoffa dell’universo”, la materia prima nello spazio e nel tempo già dotata di una sua ”coscienza/energia” (così definisce P. Chardin l’energia interiore delle particelle cosmiche secondo due vettori) dalla quale si originano tutte le forme materiali secondo modalità discrete e ben definite, da quelle infinitesimali, all’atomo, alla molecola, agli elementi naturali; una stoffa che evolve passo dopo passo verso tutti i materiali sempre più complessi dell’universo. E’ la Cosmogenesi e la Geogenesi.
Nel passaggio critico dalla molecola alla vita, l’autore evidenzia la fase critica da una pre-vita macromolecolare ad una vita cellulare, fino a giungere alle forme più complesse di vita, evidenziando l’enorme importanza di questo passaggio, che ritiene unico ed irripetibile e che, a differenza di tanti altri accadimenti geologici e planetari periodici o ripetibili, gli appare dai dati scientifici come pulsazione unica, come “quantum primordiale unico”. E’ la Biogenesi, orientata sempre dalla stessa “coscienza/energia” primordiale che guida l’espansione delle infinite forme viventi. E c’è un momento geologico al vertice dell’albero filogenetico della vita quando questa coscienza tende a manifestarsi esternamente come pensiero, sviluppatosi nelle forme più complesse dei mammiferi terziari, forme sulle quali si concentra il suo sguardo: i Primati Antropoidi.
Ma quando è nata la coscienza, la riflessione, il pensiero ?
Fra gli Antropoidi della fine del Pliocene ed il successivo livello (Pleistocene-Olocene) dove appare l’uomo con i suoi primi manufatti e arti parietali, inizia ad affiorare l’autocoscienza, la riflessione, lo specchiarsi e lo specchiare tutto il creato in se stessi. Un salto qualitativo enorme a fronte di variazioni filogenetiche minori, ad eccezione del volume del cranio. Tutto ciò in tempi brevi secondo l’autore, entro poche generazioni ed in modo simile al processo che accompagna lo sviluppo della coscienza nell’ontogenesi di un bambino. La vita diventa pensiero. E’ la Noogenesi, che cambia di nuovo il pianeta in modo unico ed irripetibile, con una nuova discontinuità nella continuità, come lo fu con l’inizio della vita. Con l’evoluzione umana, dopo l’uomo di Mauer (Heidelberg), l’uomo di Giava, l’uomo di Pechino e l’uomo di Neanderthal, ecco il pensiero dell’uomo Cro-Magnon (sapiens, l’uomo moderno) e nel Neolitico la nascita delle prime civiltà.
Con un continuo cambiamento dovuto più a mutazioni di pensiero piuttosto che a mutazioni genetiche, l’uomo scopre attorno a sé e in sé l’evoluzione: “l’evoluzione siamo noi.” (pag. 311). E l’ascesa della coscienza iniziata con la stoffa dell’universo implica che l’evoluzione non possa fermarsi all’uomo, ma debba continuare e debba esistere “per noi, nel futuro, sotto una qualche forma, almeno collettiva, non solo una sopravvivenza, ma una Supervita.” (pag. 313).
L’inarrestabile ascesa della coscienza genera unificazione anziché divergenza tra pezzi di umanità, nonostante gli insuccessi ripetuti nella storia, ed è frutto di una sorta di superorganizzazione alla quale tutti gli esseri pensanti della terra sono incanalati secondo un’unica direzione (amore) di rinnovamento spirituale della terra, attraverso una unione collettiva delle coscienze convergenti (supercoscienza), dove scoperta e sintesi diventano creazione. Una esigenza di cammino comune verso un centro extraplanetario (punto Omega) che chiude lo spazio-tempo, verso il quale ogni singola coscienza convergendo diventa sempre più sé stessa e dove alla fine del mondo la noosfera di tutti i tempi approderà, nella completezza della sua evoluzione.
Un cammino temporale immenso, paragonabile a tempi geologici separa l’umanità di oggi dalla terra finale, cammino durante il quale l’umanità ancora giovane avrà la possibilità di superare altri “punti critici” e avviare nuove fasi evolutive con potenzialità di pensiero e di riflessione ancora maggiori; fino a che religione e scienza accomunate nella comune “conoscenza” arriveranno al vertice finale della vita.
In questo senso l’enigma del “fenomeno cristiano” come lo definisce De Chardin, che nasce dal fenomeno sociale quale realtà indiscutibile nel mondo, è controprova del punto Omega.

Difficile commentare un libro come questo, che a fatica ho letto e compreso. Un libro scritto talvolta con “stile faticoso” come commentava J. Monod (Il caso e la necessità. Mondadori, 1976).
In qualche caso nello stendere questo commento ho preferito usare le stesse parole dell’autore per non rischiare di deformare i suoi concetti. Questo libro lascia stupiti per l’ampiezza immensa del suo pensiero, che abbraccia tutto l’Universo dalla sua nascita al presente ed alla sua fine, per lo sforzo di megasintesi che riesce ad unire scientificamente e spiritualmente tutto il creato in modo dinamico (pre-vita, vita, pensiero, e supervita innervate dalla “coscienza/energia), per il giustificare il tutto secondo una evoluzione irreversibile ed univoca verso un ipotetico punto Omega, ma soprattutto, dal punto di vista intellettuale e personale, per la sua tenace determinazione a tratti poetica nel descriverci con convinzione estrema questa grandiosa evoluzione cosmica orientata ed incanalata nel “fenomeno cristiano”. Unisce l’evoluzione di Darwin con il “fenomeno cristiano” anticipando e dando un senso, credo, alla biologia molecolare senza un fine che descriverà Monod nel 1970 (Il caso e la necessità).
Come sottolinea lo stesso autore, il volume non rappresenta certo un trattato scientifico ma neppure un’opera teologico-filosofica. L’intento è quello di vedere il fenomeno umano, tutto il fenomeno: pre-vita, vita, pensiero, supervita, ricercando nell’evoluzzione del cosmo una via, dopo aver vissuto direttamente una supercoscienza delle guerre, la supercoscienza dell’amore.
In quanto datato, le descrizioni scientifiche utilizzato sono naturalmente poco attuali, soprattutto nel terzo capitolo dove tratta in dettaglio la fase preistorica della comparsa dell’uomo: i dati sono fermi agli anni ’40-’50, e ovviamente non possono considerare le nuove teorie evolutive e le numerose scoperte archeologiche emerse negli ultimi decenni, ma nonostante questo il pensiero dell’autore rimane pienamente valido.

I read this years ago and I remember it blowing my mind. However, I was not as knowledgeable about certain scientific subjects as I am now so I do believe a re reading is in order. I have forgotten most of the book but there are certain images that have stuck with me throughout my life. The idea of evolution being a physical manifestation of the ever increasing complexity of consciousness is one of those ideas. It is definitely a very entertaining read but like all works of man that have to do with the deepest understandings of the universe and life, it is most likely flawed and lacking in certain respects. This is undoubtedly no fault of the man himself but just a reflection of the limits of human knowledge.

Everyone should read this book in college. Prescient and great in giving us shared terms for the leading edge. Why not 5 stars? I don’t jibe with predicating all the cosmic awareness on palaeontology-it has just led to the message being marginalized. But I can’t say it’s wrong either, and I may not be the audience for it. I feel I should have stayed and bothered more folks about the human to Omega dimensions that resonate best for me. I will bother them now!

Despite the hype, I found The Phenomenon of Man to largely consist of flawed, unsupported conclusions - except for the parts that were incomprehensible.

The Patron Saint of the Internet presents his theory of...well, everything. From the beginning of the universe to its ultimate culmination in the Omega point, Teilhard de Chardin explains the process that is God. Very interesting reading. Wish I were smart enough to fully grasp everything he presents!

One of the most difficult books I’ve read, but the last 100 pages brought it together in such a beautiful fashion. Need to simmer on this one for a while. Good companion to Wilber’s Theory of Everything.

The Phenomenon of Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in The Phenomenon of Man, wrote an enormously influential book. First published in French in 1955, it is still a landmark today. In fact, many modern ideas might fall into place on reading this book. I here review the 1970 revised English edition, which is still widely available.

First, I ran a core, five-page section of the book through computer analysis, to get an idea of its difficulty: BOOK 3, CHAPTER II. 3, The Attributes of the Omega Point. The verdict: one would do well to have studied Philosophy 101 to read this book—better, have a Bachelor of Philosophy degree.

Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit Father, and highly regarded as a palaeontologist. He accepted Darwinian evolution as a given. However, classic Darwinism, he writes, proceeds by “strokes of chance”, so that it cannot in itself offer meaning or hope for life. Nor can it explain, in his view, the emergence of mind.

But apart from Darwin, writes Teilhard, there is a purposive process of evolution, which he refers to as “cosmogenesis”—and within such cosmogenesis, the emergence of mind takes place, a process which he refers to as “noogenesis”. This is not merely the evolution of the individual mind, but of the collective sphere of mind on the planet, which he refers to as the “noosphere”.

Such evolution is not directionless. “Mankind in its march” is headed for a final destination, the “Omega point”, or “peace”. At this point, the noosphere will be intensely unified, having achieved a “hyper-personal” organization. This does not mean that humans will become “more highly individualized”, but “an organism which has transcended individuality”.

There are parallels here with contemporary theology. The missiologist Charles van Engen proposes a Kingdom of God which moves with “impelling force” (compare Teilhard’s “march”) towards an “anticipatory focal point” (compare Teilhard’s “Omega point”)—the goal of which is “shalom” (compare Teilhard’s “peace”). In fact, once one is on the lookout for such parallels, one sees them everywhere.

But Teilhard, in another way, might have become more relevent today than he ever was. He writes that we are on a journey of “emancipation”, to be “liberated from phyletic servitudes”. Compare the philosopher Max Horkheimer’s definition of Critical Theory: “the struggle for human emancipation”. It is an outlook which drives much of what we see today—further explored in my own work.

However, there are major problems in Teilhard’s thought, and one does not need to come to his book as an independent outsider to find them. They are inside the covers of the book itself, without reference to external views.

1. He calls his work a “scientific treatise”. Yet he points out that science, by and large, would oppose his views: “The majority of ‘scientists’ would tend to contest the validity of [my views].” “Nine biologists out of ten will today say no.” And “we cannot dream of expressing the mechanism of [emergent] evolution”.

2. He continually expresses fundamental doubt about his own ideas. While on the one hand, he claims to have an “invincible” scheme, on the other hand he considers: “The views I am attempting to put forward are … largely tentative”. “We must resign ourselves to being vague in our speculations.”

3. On the one hand, Teilhard writes about “mankind in its march” of purposive, emergent evolution. On the other hand, this evolution “can give itself or refuse itself”. If we fail to nurture it, “the whole of evolution will come to a halt”. On what basis, then, should we have much confidence in it?

4. Teilhard clearly does not know what to do with suffering. In fact he relegates it to an Appendix. What are we to make of it? He writes, “Necessarium est ut scandala eveniant”. It is a necessary scandal. “Suffering and failure, tears and blood: so many by-products … begotten by the noosphere on its way.” Where, then, is comfort for the suffering and oppressed?