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39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
Teilhard shines, June 24, 2000
Reviewer: Thayne Currie (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
Simply astounding. These are about the only words that I think best describe The Phenomenon of Man. Certainly, this has to be one of the most wildly interesting books that I have ever read. Most of us know and at least vaguely understand evolution, and also theists usually respond defensively that there is no conflict between God and evolution. But rare is the person who seeks to intergrate evolution into God's large-scale, dynamic plan refusing even just to argue for some "Design" in the universe. Teilhard argues that with the onset of animals capable of internal reflection, human beings, evolution takes a turn "inward". The consciousnesss is now what evolves, evolving toward an Omega Point with Teilhard sees as Christ. Certainly in our lives we can see the appeal of this view. Shouldn't our lives be a constant growth, an evolution toward complete oneness with God?
Teilhard is a genius and the best modern example of the intellectual firepower that can come from the Catholic Church and the Jesuits in particular. Although he and the Church didn't always get along (most of his stuff was censored in some way) I think this is due to the fact that Teilhard was so far ahead of his time that the hierarchy really didn't know what to do with him. Surely, 50 or even 20 years from now Teilhard de Chardin will be regarded as one of the most prolific Catholic minds in the last few centuries.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
The Theory of Global Human Consciousness, May 7, 2005
Reviewer: Bugs "Patrick" (Los Angeles, Ca.) - See all my reviews
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1945) was a Jesuit Priest, theologian, philosopher, and paleontologist who expanded on the concept of the noosphere originated by the Russian mineralogist and geochemist, Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1863-1945) who also originated the concept of the biosphere- the "life zone" where all biological life exists between the crust of the earth to the lower atmosphere or the "life envelope" surrounding our planet.
The "noosphere" or "thinking layer", according to Chardin, comes about at that point in time when humans evolve to the realization of a global human consciousness and is totally aware of itself and then headed for the ultimate destination- the "Omega Point" or "Kingdom of God". At this point, the earth is enveloped by a collective human consciousness.
Chardin uses both science and theology to support this theory and his dissertation on this is fascinating and thought provoking. Unlike most of his religious peers, he was a proponent of directional evolution and that Darwin had hit upon the proof of God's intent, that final destination of the human conscious evolution where the Creator is realized. Darwin, of course, preferred to distance himself from theological assumptions of species evolution, especially so with us humans and his religious wife.
Chardin distinguishes humans from all other life-forms because of our abilities to contemplate our existence, hence, the uniqueness of or the "phenomenon of man". Hopefully, he concludes, that the human family will evolve to be totally conscience, intelligent and loving, cooperative, and rising far above our current chaotic existence. Amen to that lofty, but desirable goal!
The evolutionary path of the noosphere is laid out in Chardin's earth evolution and stated as: "We have been following the successive stages of the same grand progression from the fluid contours of the early earth. Beneath the pulsations of geo-chemistry, of geo-tectonic and of geo-biology, we have detected one and the same fundamental process, always recognizable-the one which was given material form in the first cells and was continued in the construction of nervous systems. We saw geogenesis promoted to biogenesis, which turned out in the end to be nothing less psychogenesis." (p 181). And leading therefore, to "noosgenesis" or global consciousness. Finally, and due to the interconnectedness and seemingly intentional direction of life on earth, Chardin gives Earth a soul: Gaia thinking- Earth "intentionally" supports life.
No wonder then that Chardin is referenced and quoted in a mountain of science and religious works. His theories have influenced such great thinkers as: Lewis Thomas
("The Lives of a Cell"), Buckminster Fuller ("The Dymaxion Map"), the Gaia Theory- Earth as a conscious, intentional, self-regulating life-support system and expounded upon by Guy Murchie ("The Seven Mysteries of Life") and later by James Lovelock (Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine"), Thomas Berry ("The Dream of the Earth") and many, many more.
Chardin traveled the world on his scientific investigations and he was present at the discovery of the Peking Man in China. Some historians have intimated that much of Chardin's travels were at the behest of the Catholic Church for they were not thrilled with his attempts to blend science and religion and the farther away from Rome he was, the better.
The church cautioned him not to publish any of his works and faithful to that edict, he left them to a friend in the U.S. to publish posthumously to avoid further conflict and retaliation from the Church- bad memories of the history of the Catholic Church's terrible treatment of scientist and thinkers whose musings drifted from repressive, suffocating church dogma, i.e., Galileo Galilei, et al.
No matter where one's leanings are on religion or science, this is a potent dissertation on bringing science and religion together for awe and respect of life and eventual peace on Earth through global consciousness.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Brilliant attempt to synthesize science, philosophy and theology, November 3, 2005
Reviewer: Patrick J. McNamara (New York) - See all my reviews
Teilhard De Chardin was a French Jesuit and scientist who attempted to the demands of science with those of religion. For a while he was in hot water with the Vatican but today he's been vindicated. Basically, he argued that there was no conflict between the claims of evolution and those of religion. God, he argues, was behind whatever happened all those millions of years ago. If you're interested in the relationship between religion and science, then I highly recommend you look at this book. It's part theology, part science and part philosophy: in short, the workings of a pretty brilliant mind. You may not agree with all his premises, but I think you'll be richer for the experience of having read Teilhard. (Trivia: The Father Merrin character in the movie "The Exorcist" was reputedly based on Teilhard.)
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Are Science and Religion Inimical Opposites?, October 24, 2005
Reviewer: Butch (From the American Heartland.) - See all my reviews
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a Jesuit priest and a paleontologist at a time in history when our greatest minds here in the West were making quantum leaps in our understanding of the ultimate nature of reality and our place in it. Divine revelations and mystical insights were at an apex. Teilhard had several mystical experiences during his lifetime. He is considered by some to have been one of the four greatest thinkers in the Western Christian tradition. The others being St. Paul, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. His counterpart in the East was Sri Aurobindo. Sychronistically, or perhaps by chance, Aurobindo was given a classical education in England as a youth and then returned to India in 1893. There Aurobindo's thinking evolved from Advaita to neo-Advaita. The primary difference being the evolution in understanding from pure monism to holistic synergetics, a move from the rational to the transrational. Reality is not numerically one, it is a unitive one, whole. Both great men came to the same basic conclusion separately at about the same time. That conclusion being that the unfolding of the Universe is both a physical and a spiritual evolution. Though Teilhard thought of himself in pantheistic terms, I believe he would be better described as a "Pan'en'theist". Panentheism according to Charles Hartshorne is the belief that God is greater than the sum of God's parts. For the Pantheist Nature is God. For the Panentheist Nature is a part of God. The former is a monotheistic thus solipsistic view, the latter a manifold thus synergetic opinion. In the former God is playing Solitaire, hence the existential dread and nihilistic moroseness of Continental Philosophy. Rationality is a tool of awareness, not the be all to end all of understanding. In the latter God is playing a game of Hearts we all can play. God is more than one but less than two, a transrational whole number. With God all things are possible.
Henri Bergson with his book "Creative Evolution" also had a profound impact on Teilhard. Bergson provided Teilhard a theoretical basis for his feeling of intimacy with nature. Bergson saw a "force" at work behind the processes of evolution. From this Teilhard would come to an understanding that would reconcile his religion with his science. He chose to see the "Book of Genesis" from a metaphorical rather than a literal perspective. From Charles Darwin Teilhard would take "time" and apply it to his understanding of natural processes. Before Darwin's theory of evolution entered the literature Western Science was working under the constraint of a time frame of only a few thousand years from the moment of Creation. After Darwin "time" became nearly infinite, beyond rational understanding. How long is a million years, let alone a billion years? A lot can happen when time expands exponentially. Given enough time it is reasonable to believe that a monkey might evolve into a man. Especially if that metamorphosis was a part of a master plan, part of an intelligent design. Today Biologists no longer quibble over whether or not there is design in Nature, the argument now is whether such design is "real design" or "apparent design". Sounds like an infinite regression to me. A one-way ticket to a House of Mirrors. The nature of Reality is not either/or, rather, it is a dynamic blend of seeming opposites.
For Teilhard, the "Theory of Evolution" became a revelation, "The Revelation". This did not sit well with many atheistic scientists, most notably Stephen Jay Gould. Let me just say that in my opinion Gould made an ass of himself. In Gould's book "Hen's Teeth and a Horse's Toes" Gould accused Teilhard of psuedo-science while admitting that he based his opinion on "circumstantial" evidence. Gould then had the audacity to claim that it was up to others to prove he was wrong about Teilhard. Talk about psuedo-science. This controversy was in regard to Teilhard's role in the "Piltdown Man Hoax". That Gould made such an allegation more than 20 years after Pierre's death and based it upon circumstantial evidence speaks more to Gould's than Teilhard's character, in my opinion. Obviously, Teilhard could not respond to Gould's allegations, though many of his contemporaries defended his honor and launched attacks of their own questioning the motives behind Gould's attack of Teilhard. Science, like Religion, isn't always pretty. I digress.
Bergson's theory that there was a "force" behind the evolution of life on Earth inspired Teilhard. He saw evolution as guided by a plan, not merely by happenstance, at least as much by orthogenesis as by natural selection. The debate over the driving force behind evolution continues. Teilhard came to see Creation as being drawnout rather than sudden. That the world is still being created. That we are still evolving. He believed in God, and he believed in Evolution. As a young man on a Dig in Egypt he had what he describes as a mystical insight into the underlying unity of the Earth, from rock to Man. For Teilhard, Religion and Science were no longer mutually exclusive. Spending most of his adult years in China Teilhard became familiar with the idea of yin and yang. The ancient Taoist concept that things mutually arise in polar pairs of seeming opposites. In/out, male/female, good/bad, creationism/evolution, science/religion. Day and night are dependent on each other, neither has meaning without the other, and the seed of each is contained within its seeming opposite. It is darkest before the dawn. Teilhard was able to see that Western Science and Religion were in many ways polar opposite/non-opposites. Mutually interdependent poles of the same underlying unity. Science without religion is sterile, religion without science is superstition.
Teilhard was rewarded for his synthesis of Materialistic Science with his Faith with accusations of being a psuedo-scientist and a heretic. Some of these attacks continue. It would not be until after his death that his writings would be released for publication. Much of his influence on our current worldview remains anonymous. There is no doubt that his thought had a profound impact on many of his contemporaries, both within the Catholic Church and within the Scientific Community. Vatican II, the movement of the Catholic Church to a more ecumenical spirit towards those of other faiths, was largely the result of Teilhard's thinking. Understanding continues to evolve.
Today Teilhard is seen by many as a nature mystic, an ecological and evolutionary visionary, and even as a prophet. There is no doubt that Teilhard's holistic thinking inspired James Lovelock to come up with his "Gaia Hypothesis", that the Earth is a "Super" organism. An organic whole greater than the sum of its parts. For Teilhard even rocks had a certain but limited consciousness. Everything had a sacred quality. Teilhard's concept of the "Noosphere" is being realized today through the spread of the "Internet". From the "Biosphere" comes the "Noosphere", and finally we arrive at the "Omega Point". The Noosphere is composed of all the interacting minds on Earth. The Omega Point is the culmination of this process of evolutionary integration. "The Phenomenon of Man", more correctly translated "The Human Phenomenon", is Teilhard's magnum opus. If you read nothing else by Teilhard read this book.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Teilhard de Chardin shows the way to go for a modern Church, September 13, 2005
Reviewer: Jan Snauwaert "Jan" (Antwerp, Belgium) - See all my reviews
Certainly, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a genius and far ahead of his time. I don't have the time nor the space available right now to develop the point, but my statement is that Teilhard de Chardin's writings ('Le Phénomène Humain' and other, more explicitly religious writings like 'Le Milieu Divin', 'Le coeur de la Matière' and so on) show the way that a modern, Catholic Church should go: a religious faith that dares to confront itself with modern science, especially with the implications of the fact that our world is fundamentally evolutionary brings with it in the different fields of human knowledge and in the field of religion. Since Teilhard de Chardin, absolutely nobody (despite the fact that actually we are over 6 billion people in this world!) has ever surpassed, nor even equalled his visionary force. Unfortunately, the Church, anno 2005, is very very far from following the lightning example of Teilhard. On the contrary, nowadays, the official Church doesn't seriously reflect on fundamental questions and prefers to take a conservative attitude. That way, without seeming to realize it herself, the Church is making a tremendously severe mistake. Taking on that "defensive", utterly conservative attitude, is the mean reason why the Church finds itself in a deep crisis; this being the case for some decades now.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Elevating the idea of evolution, April 21, 2005
Reviewer: Chris Chandler (Springfield, OR United States) - See all my reviews
_The Phenomenon of Man_ by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is a profound work of intuitive thought. It is hampered greatly by the very thing it excels in: delineating an intuitively based line of logical reasoning about the importance of evolution. In creating new terms and avoiding specifics, he both succeeds and fails. This creates the polarity of opinion I believe. Only secondarily is there controversy here in Teilhard's bring Christianity and science back in the same room.
In the context of movements of scholastic development, there are strong similarities in Teilhard's thought to systems thinking/cybernetics. The idea in this book, and in systems thinking, is to simply reflect on the patterns of the large scale and look for recurrent themes. I have found that reading works by systems thinkers, especially the more abstract ones, is extremely frustrating in that the intuitive ideas easily get lost in ambiguity without grounding in multiple specifics. Where systems thinking has evolved now is complexity science (as focused on at the Sante Fe Institute). Propped up by computer simulations and mathematical formulations and the efforts of proven greats in science, systems thinking has evolved out of its armchair infancy and now has some real work ahead for it.
I am inspired now, after my re-reading of "Phenomenon" to re-read Stuart Kauffman's _At Home in the Universe_. These two books line up nicely as a grand synthesis of the evolution of order from chaos and its mathematical underpinnings (in Kauffman's terms) which Teilhard might describe as the groping (random experimenting) of a complex myriad upward toward greater complexity, and, inevitably, to inward reflection. Anyone needing a deeper scientific grounding of Teilhard need only read Kauffman.
To say that every scale of the universe is not a part of an evolutionary story is to be fundamentally blind to the nature of the universe. Biological evolution is simply the more complicated kind. Evolution is as simple as units interacting and producing order via assymetrical events that, in effect, are foundational in how the action that follows is influenced. Order that falls out as persistent in the long run becomes the grounding principles of that layer of activity. Evolution is the story of how asymmetry shapes the universe. So from the large scale structure of the universe's asymmetry to the percentage composition of subatomic particles in our universe we have evidence of story and hence evolution.
Teilhard's profound concept of the noosphere simply gives weight to the notion of consciousness as a physically active part of the universe. Even if we can't bottle consciousness, we can see its effects on the physical world. All culture, communication and other man-made environmental influences speak to the physical impact and asymmetrically evolved story of human consciousness. As technology progresses from writing to high-speed information sharing (the Internet) to possible Matrix-like virtual realities (which would effectively augment the size of the Universe as we know it), the noosphere is rising and taking shape and influencing activities on all other physical levels.
The bitter pill that Teilhard hopes Christians can swallow is the import of the idea of evolution. When you step back and consider evolution as the story of asymmetric development, then the Bible is clearly all about that. Certain individual's actions create the growing "involution" of God toward man until His coming and dying on the cross and saving us all from our original fall. God gave us the freedom to tell right from wrong and now we live with those consequences in an unfolding story. The Bible teaches that we will reach the Omega point in our experience through further trials and unite with God in Heaven. God created the evolving universe, creationists just need to step back and take a good (scientific) look at the world and stop burying their heads in literalist interpretations which balk in the face of God's extra-pre-Biblical activity. God may have created sinners but He didn't waste His time creating so many utter fools, so we should, on the whole, as Christians be slow to question the overall views of the scientific community except in a scientific manner.
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