This book proposes a logically-argued approach to reconciling science and
religion. It takes as a starting point the view that Darwin's Theory of
Evolution is the best model we have for how the world evolves in the long term.
It extends Darwin both back into 'pre-life' and forward into the world of mind
and spirit, primarily as a whole rather than of individuals. This is used to
suggest that the answer to the question "where is it all going?" is
"to Oneness with God".
It is important to realize that the author had two differing backgrounds: 1) as a Jesuit priest and 2) as a paleontologist (fossil specialist) and
anthropologist (specializing in some of the precursors to the human race,
particularly 'Peking Man').
It is also worth noting the background against which the book was originally written
(in French).
The time was 1938-1940, at the height of the vogue for totalitarianism (under
Hitler, Stalin and several others in Europe) and at the start of World War 2.
The place was China, where he had been effectively forced into exile by the
Jesuit authorities who had forbidden him to continue his teaching career in
France (because of the unorthodoxy of his views on 'original sin', which related
to his study of evolution).
He was also denied approval to publish, and this was confirmed later by the Vatican. The
fact that the book did get published, after his death in New York in 1955, was
due to him having left the manuscript to a friend who was not bound by Vatican
diktat. Although the Vatican persisted for some time in trying to remove the
book from libraries and bookshops, the last three popes have all said positive
things about it.
As someone who shares part of the author's goal - to reconcile science and
religion - I have tried to read the book without too many prejudices. However I
have to say that it is extremely hard going, and in many places towards the end
of the book, the author has completely lost me. As it stands, the book cannot be
seriously intended for the average lay reader.
My aim in these highlights has been to concentrate on what I do understand,
see what value I can distill from it, keep my own comments reasonably
understandable, and perhaps point a way to improve on it in the light of
today's (2015) environment.
In contrast with my usual format for book highlights, I have separated my own
comments into a separate column, to the right of the quotes from Teilhard (T) himself. Page
numbers are as in my paperback version (Fount Paperbacks 1986). Square brackets
indicate my paraphrase of what T actually wrote, or my words to fill in where a
quote has been shortened.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight of what
Teilhard (T) wrote (Huxley in the Intro) | Roger's Comments |
|---|
Intro
by
Sir
Julian
Huxley | 11 |
"He has effected a threefold synthesis ..."
 |
I would say 'attempted' rather than 'effected'. |
| | |
"He achieves this by examining every fact
and every subject of his investigation sub specie evolutionis, with
reference to its development in time and to its evolutionary position." |
I take the Latin phrase to mean 'from an evolution point of view'. |
| | 11-12 |
Huxley says that his own idea, "that man's evolution was unique in
showing the dominance of convergence over divergence" is in accord with
T's view. |
I.e., other species evolve into many different sub-species, but humanity
is becoming more alike. |
| | 13 |
"The universe in its entirety must be regarded as one gigantic process,
a process of becoming ..." |
As the ancient Greeks said, "Panta rhei" - 'everything flows',
or is
in a state of flux. |
| | |
"... We should no longer speak of a cosmology but of a
cosmogenesis." |
We should not only look at 'things as they are', i.e. at a snapshot in time
- but at how things change. |
| | |
"Evolutionary phenomena ... must be defined by their direction, their
inherent possibilities (including of course also their limitations), and
their deducible future trends." |
'Deducible' sounds optimistic - even with the best knowledge
we have, our prognostications and forecasts can be totally wrong. |
| | 16 |
Huxley points out that T wants to extend 'mind-like' characteristics "by
backward extrapolation from the human phase to the biological, and from the
biological to the inorganic". |
In other words, stones, molecules, atoms etc would have some sort of
inner 'soul'. This is a difficult concept for most readers to accept. |
| | 17 |
T wants to consider 'psychic energy' as well as physical energy,
with the difference that psychic energy would not obey the second law of
thermodynamics (which says that energy tends to dissipate into 'entropy' or
'disorganization'). |
|
| | |
"The brain alone is not responsible for mind." |
Lots of other parts of bodies contribute. |
| | 20 |
"A developed human being ... is not merely a more highly individualized
individual. He has crossed the threshold of self-consciousness ... and ...
has achieved some degree of conscious integration ... of the self with the
outer world of men and nature ... He is a person, an organism which has
transcended individuality in personality." |
|
| | 26 |
T was "impatient of ... the narrowness of the anthropologists who
limited themselves to a study of physical structure and the details of
primitive social life". |
|
| | 28 |
"It is no longer possible to maintain that science and religion must
operate in thought-tight compartments ... they are both relevant to the
whole of human existence." |
|
Pref
-ace | 32 |
[An] "aura of subjective interpretation [of phenomena we observe] may
remain imperceptible where the field of observation is limited; it is bound
to become practically dominant as soon as the field of vision extends to the
whole." |
The broader the topic, the more likely we are to impose our
pre-conditioned cultural values when we try to understand it. |
| | |
"Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge ... but without
merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from
different angles and on different planes." |
|
| | |
[One of T's two basic assumptions is] "the primacy accorded to the
psychic and to thought in the stuff of the universe". |
This might be too hard for many people to accept today. |
Fore-
word | 35 |
"To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything
that makes up the universe ..." |
He seems to leave the reader to decide between the literal and metaphorical meanings of 'see'.
I think that, for humans, he means 'know and understand'. |
| | |
[Physicists and naturalists cannot] "look down from a great height upon a
world which their consciousness could penetrate without being submitted to
it or changing it". |
|
| | |
"... the most objective of their observations are steeped in the
conventions they adopted at the outset and by forms or habits of thought
developed in the course of the growth of research .." |
|
| | |
"Object and subject marry and mutually transform each other in the act
of knowledge; and from now on man willy-nilly finds his own image stamped on
all he looks at." |
The image so stamped can be that of homo religiosus as well as
the scientist. |
| | 39 |
"What I depict is not the past in itself, but as it must appear
to an observer standing on the advanced peak where evolution has placed us." |
And the position of that peak is itself moving quite fast. |
| | 40 |
"... an interpretation of the universe ... remains unsatisfying unless
it covers the within as well as the without of things; mind as well as
matter." |
T relies heavily on this metaphor of 'within' for mind and 'without' for
external appearance is ideal. With the increasing amount of brain scanning in labs
these days, the distinction may get less over time. |
| 1.1 | 44 |
Pre-Life: The Stuff of the Universe |
|
| 1.1.1a | 44 |
"... each particle of matter ... under the physicist's analysis tends to
reduce itself into something yet more finely granulated." |
|
| | 45 |
" .the substratum of the tangible universe is in an unending
state of disintegration as it goes downward." |
I think 'unending' may not be valid these days. The addition of more
sub-atomic particles and elementary 'bits' seems to have slowed. |
| 1.1.1b | |
"Thus the unity of homogeneity." |
We can envisage matter as 'a lot of essentially the same elementary stuff'. |
| | 46 |
"Something holds them (the individual elementary particles, atoms,
molecules etc) together. ... We do not get what we call matter as a result
of the simple aggregation and juxtaposition of atoms. For that, a mysterious
identity must absorb and cement them." |
I would not have thought it needs to be 'mysterious'. Isn't it explained
by attractions and repulsions between particles? |
| 1.1.1c | |
[Energy, as] "a unifying power" [is also] "the expression of structure". |
|
| | 47 |
"Hence we find our minds instinctively tending to represent energy as a
kind of homogeneous, primordial flux in which all that has shape in the
world is but a series of fleeting 'vortices'." |
This sounds in line with some recent theories. |
| | |
[T, on the other hand, thinks that] "a more complete study of the
movements of the world will oblige us ... to discover that if things hold
and hold together, it is only by reason of complexity, from above. |
To assume such an obligation seems very arbitrary. Why not from below? |
| 1.1.2 | |
"... the stuff of the universe cannot divide itself but, as a kind of
gigantic 'atom', it forms in its totality (apart from thought on which it is
centered and concentrated at the other end) the only real indivisible." |
Sure, we can talk about 'the universe' as one single thing - but why
claim it is
'indivisible'? Wouldn't it be better to say that it all hangs together and we can't remove
bits without having effects on the whole. |
| 1.1.2a | 48 |
[The universe as a system:] "All around us, as far as the eye can see, the
universe holds together, and only one way of considering it is really
possible, that is, to take it as a whole, in one piece. |
I disagree - we can take out subsystems and possibly modify them. |
| 1.1.2b | 48-9 |
[The universe as a 'totum':] "Between such a structure (a fabric or
network) and the structure of matter there is nothing in common." |
I think he means that matter is composed of a series of 'levels' whose
structures are all different (e.g. atoms, molecules, compounds, planets,
galaxies etc). He doesn't really explain his use of the word 'totum'. |
| 1.1.2c | 50 |
[The universe as a 'quantum':] The assumption made here is that "the
natural unity of concrete space indeed coincides with the totality of space
itself". |
I guess we can agree that all (3-dimensional) space is continuous,
curved as it may be according to relativity. But T's quantum isn't the same
as that of Quantum Theory scientists. |
| | |
[The group of all the little bits in the universe] "must express itself
in a global capacity for action of which we find the partial resultant in
each one of us". |
Things are going to happen, and we as humans can contribute. Presumably
everything and everyone needs energy to cause change. |
| | 51 |
"This quantum only takes on its full significance when we try to define
it with regard to a concrete natural movement - that is to say, in
duration." |
Sure, all that change is 'natural movement' in some sense, including
what we humans build up physically or mentally. |
| 1.1.3 | |
[Physics'] "ideal, in its youth, was to find a mathematical explanation
of a world imagined as a system of stable elements in a close equilibrium". |
|
| | |
"To our opened (by addition of time/duration) eyes each element of
things is henceforth extended backwards (and tends to be continued
forwards)." |
|
| 1.1.3a | 52-5 |
[T talks about 'evolution' of matter.] |
Beyond saying that 'how matter came to exist' is tied up with stars and nebulae, he does not
make a big issue of it. |
| 1.1.3b | 55-57 |
[T admits the 2 laws of thermodynamics: 1) that any change costs energy,
and the total amount of energy is closed; and 2) that in any change some
energy leaks out, or is dissipated, e.g. as heat.] |
|
| | 57 |
"... but up to now, has science ever troubled to look at the world
other than from without?" |
The implication being that there is another story, that seen from 'within'
- see page 40. |
| 1.2 | 58 |
Pre-Life: The Within of Things |
|
| | |
"On the scientific plane, the quarrel between materialists and the
upholders of a spiritual interpretation ... still endures." |
I don't think many 'upholders of a spiritual interpretation' are
fighting on the scientific plane these days. |
| | |
"Each only sees half the problem." |
Sure, there are plenty of problems related to 'mind' and 'spirit'. But
do the 'upholders of a spiritual interpretation' have any better answers? |
| | 59 |
"... there is a within ... some connections are qualitative
... others are quantitative ..." |
We can accept that many connections aren't 'measurable' and are hence
'qualitative', especially in mind and spirit (some animals as well). But I
don't think this is the same as 'within' versus 'without'. |
| 1.2.1 | |
[Some things that are normally thought of as stable may over time have to be regarded
as unstable, e.g. radio-active elements or isotopes, mountains and other
physical features on the earth's surface.] |
|
| | 61 |
[Because we see an 'interior' within ourselves,] "in
one degree or another, this 'interior' should obtrude itself as existing
everywhere in nature from all time". |
To regard our mind and spirit as 'interior' may be a natural model for
us, and we may see it in dogs etc, but I can't see how that leads us to see
a corresponding interior in pebbles. |
| | 61-2 |
"The consequent picture of the world daunts our imagination, but it is
in fact the only one acceptable to our reason." |
I disagree; we could distinguish an 'interior' for living things from a
material 'potentiality' in the non-living - as
Aristotle
suggested. |
| | 62 |
"The within, consciousness and then spontaneity - three expressions for
the same thing." |
I think this is stretching meanings too far. |
| | 63 |
"Determinate without, and 'free' within ...". |
This seems to ignore a lot that we now know goes on inside humans due to
things like habits, conditioned reflexes etc. And surely even the
determinate is subject to chance variations. |
| | |
[Having] "recognized the existence of a conscious inner face that
everywhere duplicates the 'material' external face ... can we go further and
define the rules ...?" [for this inner face. T says yes.] |
We can probably keep reading if we include 'potentiality' rather than
'consciousness' for non-living matter. |
| 1.2.1a | 64 |
"Atomicity is a common property of the Within and the Without of
things." |
Sure, we can envisage 'atomic' particles of thought or potentiality. |
| 1.2.1b | 65 |
[Looking backwards along the timescale of evolution,] "consciousness
displays itself qualitatively as a spectrum of shifting shades whose lower
terms are lost in the night". |
I haven't managed to follow this argument. |
| 1.2.1c | 66 |
"... a consciousness is that much more perfected according as it lines a
richer and better organized material edifice." |
In other words, the within generally evolves in the same
direction as the without. |
| | 67 |
"... the rest of this essay will be the story of the struggle between
the unified multiple and the unorganized multitude." |
Sounds like a fairly obvious 'good idea'. |
| 1.2.3 | |
"On the one hand the objective reality of psychical effort and work is
so well established that the whole of ethics rests on it and, on the other
hand, that the whole description of the universe in mechanical terms has had
no need to take account of it ..." |
He doesn't mention psychology here; maybe he thinks Freud etc
are all insignificant. I don't think it is true now that science takes no
account of psychical effort and work; there is a lot happening in Neuroscience
research. |
| 1.2.3a | 68 |
[The problem of the two energies, i.e. material and spiritual.] |
He is determined to treat them as contrastingly different. |
| | 69 |
[The two depend on each other: e.g.] "To think, we must eat" |
|
| | 69-70 |
[But there seems to be no chance of a formal relationship between the
two.] |
|
| 1.2.3b | 70 |
[Since T regards this 'dualism' as anti-scientific,] "we shall assume
that all energy is psychic in nature ..(and) ... is divided into ... a
tangential energy which links the element with all others of the same
order ... and a radial energy which draws it towards even greater
complexity and centricity - in other words forwards." |
He seems to have swapped one anti-scientific model for an even more
anti-scientific one. Radial and tangential energies seem to be concepts of
his own invention. I don't see what qualifies either as psychic. |
| | 71 |
"... in the system proposed, we are paradoxically led to admit that
cosmic energy is constantly increasing ... This would seem to be in direct
contradiction with the law of conservation of energy." |
Such 'cosmic energy' is not 'energy as we know
it'. This idea has fallen off the 'scientific plane'. |
| | 72 |
"Since ... the entire edifice of the universe is constantly supported at
every phase of its progressive 'centration' by its primary arrangements, it
is plain that its achievement will be conditioned up to the highest stages
by a certain primordial quantum of tangential energy, which will gradually
exhaust itself following the principle of entropy." |
It doesn't seem clear where this 'progressive centration' comes from -
things come together and split apart. T seems to be suggesting that there
will be an end to the
universe when all the 'tangential' energy - the one we all know about - has
been used up. Sounds like the
Big Crunch. |
| | |
[T asks 3 questions: a] "By virtue of what special energy does the
universe propagate itself along its main axis in the less probable direction
of the higher forms of complexity and centricity?" |
Why is this direction "less probable"? |
| | |
[b] "Is there a definite limit to the ... total of the radial energies
developed in the course of transformation?" |
|
| | |
[c] "Is this ... form of radial energies, supposing it exists, subject to
reversal?" |
Could the universe ever disintegrate back into pre-life and lower-level
elements (presumably due to increasing entropy)? |
| 1.3 | 73 |
Pre-Life: The Juvenile Earth |
|
| 1.3.1a | 74-75 |
[In the] "rich variety of the mineral world", [elements have combined into
structured crystals, but,] "by their innate structure the molecules are
unfitted for growth" [They are still] "an indefinitely extended mosaic of
small elements". |
|
| 1.3.1b | 76 |
"... by virtue of the initial advance of the elements on earth towards
the crystalline state, energy was constantly released and liberated ..." |
But might crystal formation have taken in more energy than it gave out? |
| | |
"This was constantly augmented by the atomic decomposition of
radio-active substances and by that given off by solar rays." |
Or, did this provide some of the energy needed for crystal formation? |
| | |
" ... the free energy of the new-born earth passed with the absorption
of heat into building up certain carbonates ... like those which astonish us
by their power to increase indefinitely the complexity and instability of
their elements. This is the realm of polymerization ..." |
I am not sure this is an accurate description of polymerization. |
| | 77 |
"In the world, nothing could ever burst forth as final across the
different thresholds successively traversed by evolution ... which has not
already existed in an obscure and primordial way." |
T is claiming that nothing can evolve from stuff that didn't exist in a primordial
way from the beginning of the universe. |
| | |
"... it is in this (the temperate zone of polymerization) that the 'within
of the earth' was soon to be gradually concentrated." |
I am not sure what he really means by 'the within of the earth', but I
think he is referring to how life started. But surely some of his 'within'
belongs to pre-life? |
| 1.3.2 | 78 |
[T says he certainly didn't mean earth's physical core.] "The 'within'
is used here ... to denote the 'psychic' face of that portion of the stuff
of the cosmos enclosed from the beginning of time within the narrow scope of
the juvenile earth." |
What about a 'within' for Mars? |
| | |
"By the very fact of the individualization of our planet, a certain mass
of elemental consciousness was originally imprisoned in the matter of
earth." |
Again, not 'consciousness as we know it'. |
| | |
[It is useless to suppose that life came from a germ from outer space.] |
That would only be passing on the question of how life started to some
other part of the universe. |
| | |
[The world] "already carried pre-life within it, and this, moreover , in
definite quantity." |
'Definite quantity' implies measurement units of energy, of potentiality, or
something? Is it a constant total? If not, where does the extra come from? |
| | 79 |
[It's apparently a] "primitive and essentially elastic quantum". |
I'm struggling to reconcile 'definite quantity' with 'elastic quantum'. |
| | |
"We have said that spiritual energy, by its very nature, increases in
'radial' value, positively, absolutely and without determinable limits, in
step with the increasing chemical complexity of the elements of which it
represents the inner lining." |
|
| | 80 |
"Thus, wherever we look on earth, the growth of the 'within' only
takes place thanks to a double involution, the coiling up of the
molecule on itself and the coiling up of the planet on itself." |
This seems very fanciful, but what I think he is saying is that the
earth, as a sphere, is a closed space - and the zone of polymerization is a
smaller part of that. So the process of evolution comes to a point when it
can only advance through further complexity of the molecules. To T's
credit, the molecule 'coiling up on itself' sounds cannily like DNA. Did he
have an inkling, or did he know some researcher? |
| | |
"By the very mechanism of its birth, the film in which the 'within' of
the earth was concentrated and deepened emerges under our eyes in the form
of an organic whole in which no element can any longer be separated from
those surrounding it. Another indivisible has appeared at the heart of the
great indivisible which is the universe." |
I think 'organic whole' here only means 'life as a total concept'. I
wonder if this statement would still be true if traces of life were
found on Mars or a planet outside the solar system. I take 'film' to mean
that part of the earth's crust conducive to polymer formation and thus to
life. |
| 2.1 | 85 |
Life: The Advent of Life |
|
| | |
[Just as it is impossible] "to draw a clear line between animal and
plant on the unicellular level ... [we can't] draw one ... between 'living'
protoplasm and 'dead' proteins" [on the multi-cellular level]. |
|
| | |
These [dead proteins] "would be incomprehensible if they did not possess
already, deep down in themselves, some sort of rudimentary psyche". |
I haven't come to this conclusion myself, and will stick with
'potentiality'. I think T is misusing the word 'psyche'. |
| | |
"On the experimental phenomenological plane, a given universe and each
of its parts can only have one and the same duration, to which there is no
backward limit." |
So, everything is 'from the very beginning'? The universe maybe, but
parts split, join and metamorphose. |
| | 86 |
"... each new being has and must have a cosmic embryogenesis ..." |
I don't see where this comes from. |
| | |
"The curve doubles back ..." |
T is talking about changes of state, e.g. boiling, cell division etc,
but I think 'curve doubles back' is an utterly confusing and inappropriate
metaphor. |
| | |
"Then at a given moment ... [the waters] ... must unquestionably have
begun writhing with minute creatures." |
I don't think this is how things are seen today. His picture sounds like
a fanciful view of the early Cambrian or Ediacaran - but stromatolites
started long before this - and they did not writhe. |
| 2.1.1 | 87 |
[The cell is the basic starting point for life.] |
Presumably, one that can autonomously divide itself. |
| | 88 |
"Volumes have been written ... [most of it about where cells went from
here, but not much about where cells came from, and how]. |
This was all written before DNA. |
| | 89 |
[A cell is] "an object without antecedents." |
|
| 2.1.1A | 90 |
"We cannot fail for a moment to ... see the cell merging, qualitatively
and quantitatively, with the world of chemical structures." |
T is certainly not suggesting a 'divine spark'. |
| | 91 |
[Viruses have the] "faculty of multiplying in contact with living
tissue." |
|
| | |
"The ... existence of intermediate states between the microscopic
living world and the ultra-microscopic inanimate one has now passed into the
field of direct experimentation." |
|
| 2.1.1B | 92 |
"Duration in time" [is needed to explain the more and less primitive
vertebrates, so by analogy it's the same with the advent of life]. |
|
| | 93 |
"... the mega-molecular zone has now insinuated itself ..." |
As we now recognize, through DNA. |
| | 94 |
[The appearance of mega-molecules must have happened a) very slowly; b)
in a critical mass; and c) in a quasi-historical evolution process
themselves.] |
|
| | |
[The time needed must have been] "longer than from the Cambrian period
to the present day". |
Maybe we ought to take stromatolites instead as nearer to the start of life
on earth. But the statement is still true. |
| 2.1.1Ca | 96 |
[The external (biological) view of the cell is] "a nucleus containing
'chromosomes' ... [in] a background of the surrounding 'cytoplasm', perhaps
itself composed of fine rods or filaments ('mitochondria')." |
|
| | |
[We are] "entitled to view them [cells] as representatives of another state
of matter, something as original as ..." |
|
| 2.1.1Cb | 97 |
[It's an] "internal revolution". |
|
| | |
" it is incumbent on me to explain in what specific way the
internal ('radial') energy is modified to correspond with the external
('tangential') constitution of the cellular unit." |
It's clear that T needs continuity of the 'internal' to support his
overall argument. But is he convincing us? |
| | |
"... we must resign ourselves to being vague in our speculations." |
Cynically, one could say this about a lot of what is in this book. |
| | 98-9 |
|
T continues with rather vague arguments, only observing that the
'within' should evolve in complexity in step with the 'without'. |
| 2.1.2 | 99 |
[There is a law of] "automatic suppression of evolutionary peduncles". |
T means that we will never see the 'missing links' at any of the key
moments in evolution. Maybe because they are too rare to leave traces? |
| 2.1.2a | 100 |
[Life must have started in a 'milieu' of incredible numbers of granules
of protoplasm, in a warmer, shoreless ocean.] |
I'm not sure if life came before any shores. |
| | 101 |
[The smaller things are, the more numerous they are.] |
I don't see how this supports the argument. Is T saying that because the
granules of protoplasm are very small, millions of cells must have appeared
simultaneously? |
| 2.1.2c | 102 |
"Was the origin of cells 'monophyletic' [only one type in the beginning]
or 'polyphyletic'?" |
If polyphyletic, cells would have started independently in different
places, possibly with different structures. The same question applies to all
evolutionary 'jumps'. |
| 2.1.2b | 103 |
[It's] "An organic problem of masses or multitudes and not a simple statistical
problem of large numbers: what does that difference imply?" |
Not much I'd say. Aren't they just two ways of looking at the same
thing? |
| 2.1.2d | 104 |
" .the initial mass of the cells must from the start have
been inwardly subjected to a sort of inter-dependence which went beyond a
mere mechanical adjustment, and was already a beginning of 'symbiosis' or
'life-in-common'." |
|
| | |
"... some network of influences and exchanges which made it a
biologically cohesive whole." |
This sounds speculative, although it makes me think of coral (lots of
polyps) and the
Portuguese Man o' War. |
| | 104-5 |
[The] "admission [of chemical elements] into this primordial envelope
[the cell] gives rather the impression of having been mysteriously guided by
a previous selection or dichotomy." |
Most types of cell contain lots of carbon, some nitrogen, and similar
vitamins and enzymes. 'Mysteriously guided' suggests a leap of faith rather
than science. |
| | 105 |
"... the molecules incorporated into living matter are all
asymmetrical", [some left-rotating, some right-rotating]. |
Suggestive of a double helix? |
| | |
"... the biosphere would thus represent only a single branch" [among all
the theoretical possibilities] ... within and above other less progressive
or less fortunate proliferations of pre-life." |
|
| | 106 |
"For us to probe further into the phenomena accompanying its [life's]
origin, it would be necessary for life - somewhere or other on the earth -
to be still generating today under our eyes." |
|
| | |
[Footnote: unless we can do it in the laboratory.] |
|
| 2.1.3 | 107 |
"Nothing indicates this [cells forming from non-living matter] to be the
case." |
|
| | |
"... protoplasm is no longer formed directly from the inorganic
substances of the earth." |
|
| | |
[Footnote:} '... the most convincing proof to me that life was produced
once and once only on earth is furnished by the profound structural unity of
the tree of life." |
By 'tree of life' he means the tree of evolution. This
tree almost certainly has a few 'rejoinings' of divergent limbs. Also, where do viruses,
or cancer cells, fit in with this? I am not sure it is good to rely on this
proof. |
| | 108 |
"We must at all costs resist this instinctive limitation that only our
current and manageable forms of experience [and models] are valid." |
We may find odd things happening in the past which, because they don't
fit today's thinking, get dismissed as 'aberrations'. To the scientist, this
means we need a better model. |
| | |
"...the first appearance of living bodies is clearly one" [such event,
i.e. one requiring a major re-think]. |
|
| | 109 |
"Matter seems dead. But could not the next pulsation be slowly preparing
around us?" |
Or might scientists kick it off in some lab? |
| | |
[T can't adopt this idea, because of the] "fundamental similarity of all
organic beings". |
|
| | 111 |
[Geologists have a preference for 'oscillations' or 'ebb and flow', but
the earth] "must have begun at a certain moment ... is passing through a
series of moving equilibria; and that in all probability ... is moving
towards some final state". |
|
| | 112 |
"And if thereafter life has never again been formed directly from the
elements of the lithosphere or hydrosphere, this is apparently because the
very emergence of a biosphere so disturbed, impoverished and relaxed the
primordial chemism of our fragment of the universe that the phenomenon can
never be repeated (unless perhaps artificially)." |
I don't think 'impoverished chemism' is a useful concept, or a credible
model. At
least T admits it's all his own hypothesis. |
| | 113 |
[But the hypothesis has the advantage that] "it rectifies our sense of
proportion and of values and hence renews our perspective of the world". |
Isn't T saying "it fits in nicely with our current culture" - something
he warned us against? |
| | |
"... the hypothesis inclines us to think of the energy contained in the
living layer of our planet as developing from and within a closed 'quantum',
defined by the amplitude of the primordial emission." |
It's a fixed quantum here, rather than an elastic one. How
does this relate to the first law of Thermodynamics? Is the energy available
to life just a limited subset of the original energy of the world? Surely
the energy sent to us daily by the sun should be included - it might provide
the majority. |
| 2.2 | 114 |
Life: Expansion of Life |
This chapter concentrates on physical evolution - just the 'without'. |
| 2.2.1a | 115 |
"Everything in the subsequent development of life stems from this potent
primordial phenomenon" [cell division]. |
|
| 2.2.1b | 116 |
"The more a phenomenon spreads, the more it gains in virulence. Once
fission has started, nothing from within can arrest its devouring and
creative conflagration ... nor is there any external influence powerful to
to check its progress." |
This makes cell fission sound much like nuclear fission - but that can
end up with a big bang. What if we look at mankind? Won't the earth run out
of resources? And did not the
Cryogenian era slow down early life
considerably? |
| 2.2.1c | 116-7 |
"Closed in on itself, the living element reaches more or less quickly a
state of immobility. It becomes stuck and coagulated in its evolution. Then
by the act of reproduction it regains the faculty for inner adjustment, and
consequently takes on a new appearance and direction." |
Is he suggesting that congestion is the trigger for mutation? It's possibly one trigger -
environmental changes might be another. However I think this idea is a bit
fanciful, and possibly even provably wrong. |
| 2.2.1d | 117 |
"... life discovered the wonderful process of conjugation." |
This seems a sort of pre- or early sexual reproduction, able to produce
variety in offspring. |
| 2.2.1e | 118 |
"We still seem to be able to see all the stages of the still
unfinished march of nature towards the unification or synthesis
...[from] simple aggregation ... colony of attached cells ... metozoan cell
of cells ...society ..." |
|
| | 119 |
"Thanks to it [association], living substance is able to build itself up
in sufficient bulk to escape innumerable external obstacles ... a certain
size is physically necessary for certain movements ... [and] is able to find
room in itself to lodge the countless mechanisms added successively
in the course of differentiation." |
|
| 2.2.1f | 119-20 |
"... the rejuvenations made possible by reproduction ... add ...
and their sum increases in a pre-determined direction. [We get] the
line as a natural unit distinct from the individual. [This is]
ontogenesis. |
|
| | 120 |
[Footnote:] "... the manifest property of living matter to form a system
in which 'terms succeed each other experimentally, following
constantly increasing degrees of centro-complexity'." |
This provides the basis of paleontology - the way of deciding which
fossils are older than which other fossils. |
| 2.2.1g | |
A Corollary: The Ways of Life |
I have made this into sub-section g to keep some structure. |
| 2.2.1ga | 121 |
[What are the] "elementary laws [that] characterize life in movement at
all levels and in all circumstances?" |
|
| | |
[Profusion:] "... millions of germs and millions of adults jostling,
shoving and devouring one another, fight for elbow room ... the struggle
for life." |
|
| | |
" 'Survival of the fittest by natural selection' is not a meaningless
expression, provided it is not taken to imply either a final ideal or a
final explanation." |
|
| | |
"By reckless self-reproduction life takes its precautions against
mishap. It increases its chances of survival and ... multiplies its chances
of progress." |
|
| | |
"... groping strangely combines the blind fantasy of large
numbers with the precise orientation of a specific target. It would be a
mistake to see it as mere chance. Groping is directed chance ... [a
sort of] try everything." |
I'm not sure about the logic here. Why can't the 'groping' that gets life
to move in the right direction be seen as just that chance variation that survives
natural selection? |
| 2.2.1gb | 122 |
"Ingenuity ... life has to be very clever indeed." |
This confuses me. Isn't T dragging in some sort of 'within', even
consciousness, prematurely? |
| | |
"That what is 'free', even in men, can be broken down into determinisms,
is no proof that the world is not based on freedom - as indeed I maintain
that it is." |
This sounds like 'faith' - certainly not science. |
| 2.2.1gc | 123 |
"... indifference towards whatever is not future and totality ..." |
I find this subsection totally baffling. I don't think it makes sense. |
| 2.2.2 | 124-5 |
"... the 'front' of advancing life is neither chaotic nor continuous. It
is ... divergent and arranged in tiers ... [which] biology tries to express
as names. ... Life ... ramifies." |
|
| 2.2.2a | 125-8 |
[Titled] "Aggregates of Growth", [this section talks about how different
species (T calls them phyla) get to become established.] |
It's very difficult to follow. He uses multiple metaphors, e.g. 'bundles
of nervures', radiating lines, contagion, dripping water and 'breaking away
at a sufficient angle'. |
| 2.2.2b | 128-31 |
[Species reach a sort of maturity where there is less frequent mutation,
but when new variants can arise. |
|
| | 130 |
"... once they have attained their definitive form at the end of each
verticillate ray, the elements of a phylum tend to come together and form
societies just as surely as the atoms of a solid body tend to crystallize." |
I would say 'sometimes' - rooks do, crows don't. T seems to be softening
the reader up for later lines of argument. |
| | 131 |
"... the formation of a verticil is explained ... by the phylum's need
to pluralize itself in order to cope with a variety of different needs or
possibilities." |
|
| 2.2.2c | |
"... each line of life follows a process of alternate contraction and
expansion ... [like] knots and bulges ..." |
|
| | 132 |
[Our views of what happened long ago need to be corrected for the effect
of our distance from the time when the happenings occurred.] |
T doesn't suggest how. |
| | 133 |
[T wants to rebut those who argue for fixed species on the grounds that
evolutionists can never show them the 'peduncle' or 'bud' of the very first
members of the new variation.] |
|
| | 134 |
"Where are the first Greeks and Romans? Where were the first shuttles
[for weaving], chariots or hearth stones? |
|
| | |
[Footnote: If our current civilization was buried tomorrow, future
archaeologists would only find recent car models, not the original
experimental ones.] |
This discounts the mania for preserving old models of all sorts of
contraptions in museums. |
| 2.2.3a | 135-47 |
[Just a refresher course on the "main lines' of the tree of life.] |
|
| 2.2.3b | 147-51 |
[More of the same, remarking on the vast numbers, volume and duration.] |
|
| | 151 |
"... no-one yet has seen one [sequoia] die a natural death." |
|
| 2.2.3c | 152-5 |
[Summarizes the 'evidence' for his [fairly mainstream] view of physical
evolution.] |
There's plenty. |
| | 155 |
[Footnote:] "... evolutionary theory has long since ceased to be a
hypothesis, to become a ... condition which all hypotheses of physics or
biology must henceforth satisfy." |
|
| 2.3 | 156 |
Life: Demeter |
|
| | 157 |
"... men's minds are reluctant to recognize that evolution has a precise
orientation and a privileged axis." |
Because that's 'faith'! A general orientation would be fine, and
maybe the line leading to humans is dominant, but 'privileged' implies a
privilege being granted - by what or whom? |
| 2.3.1 | 157-62 |
[This section tries to establish that the evolution of the brain and
nervous system is at least if not more important than that of the external
features one can see in fossils.] |
It is difficult to trace this evolution from any
observable evidence. T uses a lot of words and metaphors, and maybe I can
agree with a lot of it, but there is a lot of faith needed to accept any of
his statements about it. |
| 2.3.2 | 162-8 |
[This section tries to forge a role for the 'within' and 'radial energy'
in tracking the rise of consciousness.] |
It still reads as just a theory to 'fill the gaps' in what we can observe. |
| | 164 |
[T does not think that the "mechanical energies" that arise from
challenges to living things are enough to overcome these beings'
"fundamental inertia" against mutating.] |
Maybe, but cannot the natural variability of the gene inheritance
process, or maybe radioactivity, be a trigger? |
| | 165 |
"The impetus of the world, glimpsed in the great drive of consciousness,
can only have its ultimate source in some inner principle ..." |
More faith, I would say. |
| | |
"How can life respect determinisms on the without and yet act in
freedom within? Perhaps we shall understand that better some day." |
I think he is virtually admitting that this whole idea is conjecture. |
| | |
[Footnote: T favours a balance between Darwinian chance and
neo-Lamarckian anti-chance.] |
T seems reluctant to abandon Lamarckism (inheritance of features
acquired by a parent during their life, i.e. not through genes) - despite
such a theory being well and truly buried (as far as physical evolution
goes, anyway).. |
| | |
"It is only through strokes of chance that life proceeds, but strokes of
chance which are recognized and grasped - that is to say, psychically
selected." |
Sure, man and higher animals can grasp chance, but not lower life forms? |
| | 166 |
"The more often I come across this problem [slowness of adaptation] and
the longer I pore over it, the more firmly it is impressed upon me that in
fact we are confronted with an effect not of external forces but of
psychology." |
"Fundamental inertia', I suppose! |
| | |
"... the tiger ... receives, develops and hands on the 'soul of a
carnivore'." |
Sounds like Lamarckism to me. Might it not be a combination of brain
hard-wiring and training? |
| | |
"Once we have admitted this ..." |
If I can't, is there much point in reading on? |
| | 167 |
"We are dealing with only one event, the grand orthogenesis of
everything living towards a higher degree of immanent spontaneity." |
If that's the position, we have to allow lots of tiers of sub-event. And
where does that leave pre-life? |
| | |
"To write the true natural history of the world, we should need to be
able to follow it from within." |
It's clear to me that we can't expect to follow it from within further
back than written human records. Brain size can't tell us much. I think
'true' is the wrong word - it should be 'complete'. |
| | |
"From the biosphere to the species is nothing but an immense
ramification of psychism ..." |
OK, the 'without' may not be the whole story, but it is part of it - so
'nothing but' depends on his position that even tangential, material energy
is 'psychic'. |
| | 168 |
"... we are forced to realize that an event of another order - a
metamorphosis - was inevitably awaited ..." |
|
| 2.3.3 | 169 |
"Life is the rise of consciousness, we have agreed." |
Count me out! |
| | 170 |
[Insects are] "... a multitude pathetically involved and struggling in a
blind alley" |
Surely he could equally dismiss humans in this way! Maybe insects are indeed
just too small and stuck in their rut, but might not some grow some day and
supplant mammals and humans? |
| | 173 |
"A cat ... takes interest, it flutters, it plays." |
|
| | |
"... the mammal is no longer completely the slave of the phylum it
belongs to." |
'Slavery to a phylum' doesn't grab me as a helpful metaphor, just one to
try and advance T's arguments. |
| | 175 |
"Specialization paralyses, ultra-specialization kills." |
Only all-rounders survive? But in modern western society, no
specialization can mean no job. |
| | 176 |
"Because ... the primates remained the most 'primitive' of the mammals
as regards their limbs, they remained also the most free." |
|
| | |
"In the case of the primates ... evolution went straight to work on the
brain ..." |
Personification of 'evolution' - I imagine a figure looking like Darwin! |
| 3.1 | 181 |
Thought: The Birth of Thought |
T is keen to 'talk up' the gap between pre-human hominids and Homo
Sapiens. But I think the gap between us today and the first homo
sapiens is much bigger, resulting from humans' ability to communicate
and progress. |
| 3.1.1Aa | 183 |
"... to settle this question of the 'superiority' of man over the
animals ... we need to go straight for the central phenomenon, reflection." |
|
| | |
[Reflection means] "no longer merely to know, but to know that one
knows." |
This sounds like Descartes, even though T says he doesn't like dualism,
and tries to sell both 'without' and 'within' as 'psychical'. |
| | |
[Reflection triggers] "Abstraction, logic, reasoned choice and
inventions, mathematics, art, calculation of space and time, anxieties and
dreams of love ..." |
|
| | 183-4 |
"If ... it is the fact of being 'reflective' which constitutes the
strictly intelligent being, can we seriously doubt that intelligence is the
evolutionary lot proper to man and to man only?" |
I'm not sure it follows, but in some ways it seems true. But are our
brains really evolving that much? Isn't the rise of man due to the ability
to share a lot of information efficiently? |
| 3.1.1Ab | 185 |
[We should accept that] "1) instinct, far from being an epiphenomenon,
translates through its different expressions the very phenomenon of life,
and 2) that it consequently represents a variable dimension." |
|
| | 186 |
"We are disturbed to notice how little 'anthropos' [man] differs
anatomically from the other anthropoids, despite his incontestable mental
pre-eminence ..." |
|
| | |
[Footnote:] "Having reached the stage of reflection, man would thus
represent a single one of the innumerable modalities of consciousness tried
out by life in the animal world." |
|
| | 187 |
[Footnote:] "... I confine myself here to the phenomena ... without
pre-judging the deeper causes which govern the whole issue." |
He is sticking to what can be observed - no theology - yet! |
| | 188 |
"Those who adopt the spiritual explanation are right when they defend
... transcendence of man over the rest of nature. But neither are the
materialists wrong when they maintain that man is just one further term in a
series of animal forms." |
'Right' and 'wrong' are surely too strong here. Both sides are simply
'justified in proposing their hypotheses'. |
| 3.1.1Ac | 189 |
"It is thanks to two-footedness freeing the hands that the brain was
able to grow." |
I don't see that this follows. |
| | |
"... the eyes ... were able to converge and fix on what the hands held
and brought before them ..." |
Well, chimps can do that, possibly also squirrels, meerkats, kangaroos? |
| | |
"Surely the smallest thing formed in the world is always the result of
the most formidable coincidence - a knot whose strands have been for all
time converging from the four corners of space." |
This makes no sense to me, and it isn't 'phenomenon-oriented'. |
| | 189-90 |
"And we are happy to admit that the birth of intelligence corresponds to
a turning in upon itself ..." |
I don't understand this, so am reluctant to admit it. |
| | 190 |
"... the need to accept that this step [to reflection] could only be
achieved at one single stroke." |
One could envisage other hypotheses. |
| 3.1.1Ad | 191-3 |
[Only humans can achieve 'personalization'.] |
I would have thought many higher animals can. |
| | 192 |
"The more highly each phylum became charged with psychism, the more it
tended to 'granulate'." |
Become individuals? Or form sub-species? |
| 3.1.1B | 194 |
"... below man, purely morphological criteria provide a perfectly
adequate framework for studying the distribution of species." |
Doesn't behaviour - which implies some trace of intelligence - count for
something? |
| 3.1.1Ba | 194-5 |
"... mankind divides up ... races, nations, states, countries, cultures
... people only care to see heterogeneous units - overlapping irregularly on
different planes." |
|
| | 195 |
"... what is spontaneously psychical ... becomes an appreciable part, or
even the principal part, of the phenomenon." |
T is thinking of humans, but many people see it in their pets. |
| | |
"To unravel the structure of a thinking phylum, anatomy by itself is not
enough: it must be backed up by psychology." |
Harry Cooper, Australian TV vet, would surely agree. |
| | 196 |
"... the fundamental discovery with which our study of the phenomenon of
man is to culminate - the convergence of the spirit." |
I am immediately suspicious that T is looking to push his agenda. I
would say instead that 'the spirit' in this sense sometimes converges
(globalization, the internet, media) but also diverges (fundamentalism,
fashion, marketing, opportunistic self-differentiation and tribalism).
Tribalism means having one or more 'others' - religion, sect, race, nation,
football team - that we can agree to hate. T seems to ignore it, and his
appendix on Evil is inadequate. |
| 3.1.1Bb | 197 |
"... how is it that we are not more sensitive to the presence of
something greater than ourselves moving forward within us and in our midst?" |
Back to the agenda. But if we see the disruptive influence as well, have
we got to call these somethings 'God' and 'Satan', or is that just one
choice of 'model'? |
| | |
"In the insects, for example, or the beaver, we see in the most blatant
way the existence of hereditarily formed - or even fixed - instincts
underlying the play of animal spontaneities." |
'Beaver brains' probably haven't expanded in richness of behaviour. But
didn't early humans take a long time to move on from hunter-gathering. It
wasn't the advent of man that changed things, it was the advent of
civilization - not T's 'humanization'. |
| | 198 |
[Footnote:] "Even if the Lamarckian view of the inheritability of
acquired characteristics is ... decisively refuted, when we reach the human
level and have to reckon with history, culture etc, 'transmission' becomes
'tradition'." |
That's at the level of groups who share and record knowledge, but not
for individual humans. There, evolution of brain power would still follow
the normal pace of physical evolution. |
| 3.1.1Bc | 199 |
"... we can see transformed or undergoing transformation ... the
tendencies and behaviour of the 'soul'." |
Most people might say that 'human nature' (= soul?) does not really
change - only our ability and willingness to 'plug in' to the shared pool of
knowledge. |
| | |
"... evolution of love, evolution of war, evolution of research,
evolution of the social sense." |
These are 'evolutions' in the same sense as Darwin's - and they ebb and
flow. |
| | |
"But each one ... undergoes a metamorphosis as it crosses the threshold
of reflection." |
This suggests that T thinks a lot of humans haven't crossed the
threshold! These (love, war etc) are all human activities. Again, it's the advent of
language, writing and shared knowledge that makes most difference. |
| | 200 |
"Hominization can be accepted in the first place as the individual and
instantaneous leap from instinct to thought, but it is also ... the
progressive phyletic spiritualization in human civilization of all the
forces contained in the animal world." |
|
| | 201 |
[The birth of thought] "affects life itself in its organic totality, and
consequently it makes a transformation affecting the state of the entire
planet." |
|
| | |
"Psychogenesis has led to man. Now it effaces itself, relieved or
absorbed by ... noogenesis." |
I would argue that other things have contributed to man as well. T's
term 'noogenesis' implies a model where we regard all thought as part of a
single unit. |
| | 202 |
[It's] "yet another membrane in the majestic assembly of of telluric
layers. ... Outside and above the biosphere there is the noosphere." |
|
| | |
"With hominization, in spite of the insignificance of the anatomical
leap, we have the beginning of a new age. The earth 'gets a new skin'.
Better still, it finds its soul." |
OK until the soul is dragged in - that's just one hypothesis for
observable behaviour. |
| | |
"... the historic threshold of reflection is much more important than
any zoological gap ..." |
1) civilization is more important still; 2) this is perhaps too
human-centric. |
| | 203 |
"... to a Martian capable of analyzing sidereal radiations psychically
no less than physically, the first characteristic of our planet would be,
not the blue of the seas or the green of the forest, but the phosphorescence
of thought." |
'Sidereal radiations' would have to include thought waves, and the
Martian would have to be one who thought like our author! |
| 3.1.2 | 205 |
[The population of] "African
Australopithecus ... seem to have been far
more hominoid than any [primates] living today." |
|
| | |
"... what indicates to the naturalist the origin of a living stem [in
the evolutionary tree] is a certain convergence of the axis of that stem
with that of its neighbours." |
|
| | 206 |
[As soon as] "we first catch sight of him [man] as revealed by those
indestructible stone implements we find him sprawling all over the world
from the Cape of Good Hope to Peking." |
|
| | |
"Thus in the eyes of science the 'first man' is, and can only be,
a crowd." [But T prefers] "the threshold to be crossed in a single
stride". |
I don't think scientists think this nowadays. |
| | 208 |
[Some anthropologists envisage] "several human stems becoming
genetically merged somewhere beneath the threshold of reflection; not
a 'focus' but a 'front' of evolution. ... I feel inclined to minimize the
effects of parallelism." |
T might allow multiple individuals in one pre-human species, but not from
multiple species - i.e. only one 'missing link'. This section and the next
few may be his best - it's where he was a qualified expert. |
| 3.2 | 211 |
Thought: The Deployment of the Noosphere |
 |
| 3.2.1 | 212 |
"... both Pithecanthropus [Java (Trinil) man] and
Sinanthropus [Peking
man] are hominid in their anatomy." |
| | 212-4 |
[Cerebral capacity: Trinil man 800 cc+, Peking man up to 1100cc, today's
anthropoid apes less than 600cc.] |
| | 213 |
[Diagram of the branches of pre-hominids leading to today's man and the
future beyond.] The caption reads: "The development of the human layer. The
figures on the left indicate thousands of years. They are a minimum estimate
and should probably be at least doubled. The hypothetical zone of coverage [RT:
I think this should be 'convergence'] on the point Omega is obviously not to
scale. By analogy with other living layers, its duration should certainly
run into thousands of years." |
| | 215 |
"They [Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus] were already ... in the full
sense of the word, intelligent beings." |
| | 215-6 |
[The Threshold of Reflection's] "place must therefore be beneath
every recorded verticil ..." |
Presumably he means before any pre-hominids we can find came along. |
| 3.2.2 | 218 |
"When the curtain rises again [after mid-Quaternary earth movements]
some sixty thousand years ago ... we find that the pre-hominids have
disappeared. Their place is now occupied by the
Neanderthals." |
60 thousand years ago - some say Aborigines arrived in Australia about
that time. |
| | 219 |
[There are] "two distinct groups of Neanderthaloids. [1] "Solo man of
Java", "Rhodesian man" [and Neanderthal man of Western Europe; and 2] "Steinheim
man and the
finds in Palestine". |
Heidelberg
Man is now regarded as the parent of most of these. Another branch is
that of the Denisovans
- a 'sister group' to the Neanderthals (only published in 2010, so Teilhard
wouldn't know about them). |
| 3.2.3 | 220 |
"... hardly separated in the caves by a floor of stalagmites,
Mousterian
man and Cro-Magnon man or
Aurignacian man. Here there is hardly any
geological hiatus at all ..." |
|
| | 221 |
"We find imbrication and replacement rather than continuity and
prolongation ..." |
But recent techniques do show up some admixture of Neanderthal
mitochondrial DNA in modern humans. |
| | |
"Negroes, white men and yellow men ... settled ... in their present
geographical zones. That is what we find all over the ancient world from
Europe to China at the end of the last Ice Age." |
This doesn't consider aborigines (Australian,
Ainu, Malayan 'Orang Asli',
Sri Lankan Veddas etc). |
| | 223 |
"Most of it [Neanderthal intelligence] ... seems to have been used up in
the sheer effort to survive and reproduce." |
Probably same for early Homo Sapiens. |
| | 223-4 |
"Where we could not be mistaken is in perceiving in the artists of those
distant ages [Aurignacian or Magdalenian] a power of observation, a love of
fantasy, and a joy in creation ..." |
I presume by 'creation', T means 'creating things', including 'art'. |
| 3.2.4 | 224 |
[In the Neolithic] "our great-ancestors are to be found in groups
and gathered round the fire." |
|
| | 225 |
"... after a gap ... we find sedentary and socially organized men in
place of the nomadic hunters of the horse and the reindeer." |
|
| | 226 |
"Agriculture and stock breeding ... replaced mere gathering and
hunting." |
|
| | |
"... the complex of rights and duties began to appear, leading to the
invention of all sorts of communal and juridical structures ..." |
|
| | 227 |
"... we must think of what the first white men found in America or
Africa - a veritable mosaic of groups, profoundly different both ethnically
and socially." |
It was much the same in Australia - and to some extent still is. |
| 3.2.5 | 228 |
"... the periods called 'historic' ... are nothing else than direct
prolongations of the Neolithic age." |
|
| | |
[Through history] "we find a gradually falling away of the oldest
'splinters' ... like the Australian aborigines ..." |
This would not go down well with politically-correct Australians. |
| | 229 |
"From Neolithic times onwards the influence of psychical factors begins
to outweigh - and by far - the variations of ever-dwindling somatic
factors." |
|
| | 230 |
"However brutal the conquest, the suppression [of one lot of humans by
another] is always accompanied by some degree of assimilation." |
|
| | 231 |
"Because of the haphazard configuration of continents on the earth, some
regions are more favourable than others for the concourse and mixing of
races ..." [T names Nile/Mesopotamia, Indus/Ganges, Yellow River, Central
America and the South Seas.] "But they were all largely independent of one
another." |
|
| | 232 |
[China, until recently, was too] "encrusted in the soil", [and India got
lost in its metaphysics, leading to] "excessive passivity and detachment". |
This grossly undervalues China, e.g.
Simon Winchester's 'Bomb, Book and
Compass'. Pretty poor considering T was in China for so long. But it's true
that China dropped behind for a few centuries - was that the fault of the Mongols? or the Manchus? |
| | 233 |
[In the Near East] "an exceptional concurrence of places and peoples was
... to produce that happy blend, thanks to which reason could be harnessed
to facts and religion to action." |
|
| | |
"Susa,
Memphis and Athens can crumble. An even more highly organized
consciousness of the universe is passed from hand to hand, and glows
steadily brighter." |
|
| | |
[We are heading for] "planetization of the noosphere." |
Maybe we are almost there already, with TV and the Internet? |
| | 234 |
"For even that which had long been known elsewhere only took on its
definitive human value in being incorporated in the system of European ideas
and activities." |
|
| 3.3 | 235 |
Thought: The Modern Earth |
|
| | |
"... at the end of the eighteenth century, the course had been changed
in the West." |
I would say earlier, just before the Renaissance, with the escape from
mediaeval static thinking. It was triggered by
Arab/Christian contact in
Spain, leading to Aquinas, Italian universities etc. No doubt T prefers to
start at the French Revolution. |
| | 236 |
[The modern earth is in] "the age of industry". |
|
| 3.3.1A | 240 |
"Time and Space are organically joined so as to weave, together, the
stuff of the universe. That is the point we have reached and how we perceive
things today." |
|
| | 241 |
"What makes and classifies a 'modern' man (and a whole host of our
contemporaries is not yet 'modern' in this sense) is having become capable
of seeing in terms not of space and time alone, but also of duration." |
|
| 3.3.1B | 242-3 |
[To be truly modern, we have to regard ourselves as part of evolution.] |
This section is really hard going. |
| 3.3.1C | 244 |
"The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and
reflecting upon itself." |
I think 99.9% of readers will struggle to envisage something called
'evolution' which looks at things. Sure, we are 'in' it. |
| | |
"... that very simple view, destined, as I suppose, to become as
instinctive and familiar to our descendants ..." |
Simple? It's hard to take this comment seriously. I wonder if it is
instinctive even to the best-read Jesuit. |
| | 244-9 |
"The Illumination" |
After three attempts I could still not make much sense of anything in
this section. |
| 3.3.2A | 249-52 |
[This section discusses the concept of "modern disquiet".] |
|
| | 250-1 |
[T mentions "malady of space-time" and fear of the enormity of space,
duration and numbers.] |
|
| | 252 |
[T thinks that more significant than the above is] "sickness of the dead
end", [so the disquiet comes from] "not being sure that there is an outcome
... to evolution". |
It doesn't worry me - I plod along in the middle of it all. I don't need
- or expect - a grand plan. |
| 3.3.2B | 253 |
"... when the first spark of thought appeared on the earth, life found
it had brought into the world a power of criticizing it and judging it." |
"Life found ..." - T has this irritating habit of turning abstract
concepts into quasi-human actors. |
| | 254 |
"We shall never bend our backs to the task that has been allotted us of
pushing noogenesis onwards, except on condition that the effort demanded of
us has a chance of succeeding." |
Sounds a bit like Australian football teams which 'tank' when they don't
think they have any chance of winning. |
| | |
"Man will never take a step in a direction he knows to be blocked -
[but] what are the minimum requirements to be fulfilled before we can say
that the road ahead of us is open?" |
|
| | 255 |
[Critical minds] "seem to believe that life would continue in its
peaceful cycle when deprived of ... hope and attraction of an inexhaustible
future." |
I think I agree with the critical minds. We don't need all that stuff. |
| | 256 |
[Footnote:] "All conscious energy is ... founded on hope." |
Yes, but not necessarily of an "inexhaustible future". |
| 3.3.2C | 257 |
"... life, by its very structure, having once been lifted to its stage
of thought, cannot go on at all without requiring to ascend even higher." |
Most of 'life' doesn't have this problem - only thinkers who take a
certain line. |
| | |
[We need] "to be assured [1] that there is for us, in the future, not
only survival but also super-life ... [2] we ... think and walk
always further in the direction in which the lines passed by evolution take
on their maximum coherence." |
I'm not bothered about 'super-life', but I think the second point says,
in a roundabout way, the same as I personally regard as 'the spirit of
Good'. |
| 4.1 | 261 |
Super-Life: The Collective Issue |
|
| | |
[That direction (see above) is not fulfilled if we] "break away as far
as possible from the crowd of others ". |
So he is against the way of the hermit, of withdrawal from social life -
maybe he also means from an obsession with 'me first' and 'my
individuality'. |
| | 262 |
[And racialism is just as bad.] |
Racialism here meaning 'my ethnic group first'. |
| 4.1.1A | 264 |
"... thanks to ... electromagnetic waves, each individual finds himself
henceforth, (Actively and passively) simultaneously present, over land and
sea, in every corner of the earth." |
|
| | 266 |
[The human race has not diverged much.] |
He means in terms of physical evolution. But how significant is this? |
| | 267 |
[In the case of man,] " 'ramification' works only with the aim ... of
agglomeration and convergence". |
T is claiming that whatever change there is in the human race is towards more
'togetherness'. |
| 4.1.1B | 268 |
[T foresees] "the aggregation in a single block of mankind whose
fragments meld together and interpenetrate before our eyes in spite ... of
their [human individuals and groups] efforts to separate." |
|
| | 269 |
"... the extremity of 'everyone for himself' is false and against
nature." |
|
| | |
"Also false and against nature is the racial idea of one branch draining
off for itself alone all the sap of the tree and rising over the death of
the other branches." |
|
| | |
"The outcome of the world, the gates of the future, the entry into the
super-human - these are not thrown open to a few of the privileged nor to
one chosen people to the exclusion of all others. They will open only to an
advance of all together ..." |
|
| | |
[Footnote: All together - but it's OK even if people] "do so under the
influence of a few, an elite". |
|
| | |
[T hopes that we can] "find completion in a spiritual renovation of the
earth". |
We probably have moved mostly in the right direction since 1938-40. |
| 4.1.2A | 269-70 |
[We talk about 'mankind'] "to reconcile the hopes of an unlimited future
... with the perspective of ... unavoidable individual death." |
That's the death of each one of us. |
| | 270 |
"In the eyes of the prophets of the 18th century, the world appeared
really as no more than a jumble of confused and loose relationships ..." |
Maybe the prophets he was thinking of were the
French Encyclopedists.
I thought they were more positive than that. "Confused and loose
relationships" sounds more like the international situation, between
nations. |
| | |
[Whereas to Neolithic man 'daily bread' was enough, now] "each man
demands his daily ration of iron, copper and cotton, of electricity, oil and
radium, of discoveries, of the cinema and of international news." |
|
| | |
"... the whole earth which is required to nourish each one of us ...like
some great body ... of that great Thing which had come to fulfill the
ambitions aroused in reflective being ... at one with and responsible to an
evolutionary All." |
This is drifting towards the theological. |
| | 271 |
"... elimination of individualist and racial heresies. No evolutionary
future awaits man except in association with all other men." |
|
| | 272 |
"Geometry ... would have remained stationary if it had not in the end
accepted e, π and other incommensurables as
being just as complete and intelligible as any whole number." |
He should say "... or rational number". The message is, we have to learn
to think outside the box. Other examples include imaginary number using 'i',
the square root of -1, and of course Einstein's relativity. |
| | 273 |
"... we can picture the form mankind will assume tomorrow - either ...
[simpler] as a common power and act of knowing and doing, or ... [deeper] as
an organic super-aggregation of souls. In short, science or unanimity." |
In my view, 'unanimity' is not a great aim. Surely we thrive better on
diversity of thought. |
| 4.1.2B | 275 |
"The dream on which human [scientific] research obscurely feeds is
fundamentally that of mastering ...the ultimate energy ... and thus, by
grasping the very mainspring of evolution, seizing the tiller of the world." |
How's that for mixed metaphors? But I don't think science is that
ambitious. |
| | |
"However far science pushes ... and however capable it becomes ... of
remodelling and perfecting the human element, it will always find itself in
the end of facing the same problem - how to give to each and every element
its final value by grouping them in the unity of an organized whole." |
I take this to mean: Science will never finish the job of finding a
complete theory of everything (including mind, motivation etc). |
| 4.1.2C | 276 |
"... the stuff of the universe, by becoming thinking, has not yet
completed its evolutionary cycle, and that we are therefore moving forward
towards some new critical point ..." |
Returning to the realm of the conjectural! |
| | |
[At that point] "the loose ends have been tied up, and the noosphere
tends to constitute a single closed system in which each element sees,
feels, desires and suffers for itself the same things with all the others at
the same time." |
I hope I am not around then! |
| | 277 |
"To the common sense of the 'man in the street', and even to a certain
philosophy of the world to which nothing is possible save what has always
been, perspectives such as these [see previous highlight] will seem fairly
improbable. But to a mind become familiar with the fantastic dimensions of
the universe they will, on the contrary, seem quite natural." |
I doubt if this is true. I class myself with the last group, and these
perspectives are not natural to me. In the west today, I suspect that even
the 'man in the street' has some familiarity with the 'fantastic
dimensions', and there are not so many today who take the 'nothing possible
except what has always been' view. We are all too well aware that everything
is changing. |
| | |
[But] "Modern man no longer knows what to do with the time and the
potentialities he has unleashed." |
I think this is over-pessimistic. |
| | 278 |
"We are haunted by the fear of 'unemployment'." |
After the 1930s, T would certainly see that. However economies did
recover, although the trend to less employment is probably still there. |
| | |
"... we treat as 'leisure' (to be whiled away) the activities at the
disposal of mankind." |
We are getting more used to it, and many of us don't just 'while it
away'. There is also scope for
volunteering, despite the best efforts of governments and insurance
companies to discourage it. |
| | |
"... we persist in trying to squeeze into our old tumble-down huts the
material and spiritual forces that are henceforward on the scale of a
world." |
T's "tumble-down huts" are probably our individual attitudes and
traditional habits, customs and beliefs. |
| | |
"A new domain of psychical expansion - that is what we lack." |
|
| | |
[T wants to see] "the unanimous construction of a spirit of the earth." |
|
| | |
"How is it that our first efforts towards this great goal seem merely to
take us further from it?" |
|
| 4.2 | 279 |
Super-Life: Beyond the Collective: the Hyper-Personal |
|
| 4.2.0 | |
[Preliminary remarks] "a feeling to be overcome: Discouragement" |
I have numbered this as 4.2.0 to preserve structure. |
| | |
[In the 19th century, people} "thought we were on the threshold of a
Golden Age, lit up and organized by science, warmed by fraternity." |
I think only middle class thinking people in the west had such an idea. |
| | |
"Instead of that, we find ourselves slipped back into a world of
spreading and ever more tragic dissension." |
Definitely true of 1938-40, but less true in 2015. |
| | |
[So, should we] "abandon Utopia?" |
|
| | 280 |
[We are probably too impatient - things have always only changed
slowly.] |
|
| | |
"What does matter is when it [the light on the horizon] seems to be
going out." |
|
| | 281 |
"Men are hostile or at least closed to one another." |
I think 'keeping oneself to oneself' is less intense now. |
| | |
"... a legion [i.e., a mass of individual people] is necessarily prey to
the play, however directed it be, of chance and probability." |
I would say that chance and probability are inevitable conditions of human life, and we have to
learn to live with them. |
| | |
"There are imponderable currents which, from fashion to rates of
exchange to political and social revolutions, make us all the slaves of the
obscure seethings of the human mass." |
It is easy to get caught up in such currents, and hard to distance
oneself from them. That's still true in 2015. I do like the last phrase! |
| | 282 |
[Never before has the world] "made such efforts to reduce its multitudes
to order". |
|
| | |
"... this only ending up with Communism and National Socialism - and the
most ghastly fetters. So we get ... the ant-hill instead of brotherhood." |
|
| | |
"Monstrous as it is, is not modern totalitarianism really the distortion
of something magnificent, and thus quite near to the truth?" |
I don't think we ever want anything so organized. There has been a
reaction against 'big government' as well as 'hierarchy-driven religion'. |
| | |
[Maybe] "we have neglected to give due place to the person and the
forces of personalization." |
Probably true, but I don't see T's style of it as likely to get
accepted. |
| 4.2.1A | 283 |
"Modern man is obsessed by the need to depersonalize ... all that he
most admires." |
Probably because people find it difficult to see abstract concepts as
'persons'. T goes to the other extreme: 'life does this, evolution does
that'. Religions through history have often personalized abstract
qualities - from Greek gods to the 'three-person' Trinity. |
| | 283-6 |
|
I didn't generally understand this section. |
| 4.2.1B | 286-90 |
|
I didn't do much better here either. |
| | 287 |
"To communicate itself, my ego must subsist through abandoning itself
..." |
OK, less ego may be good, but abandoning it? |
| | 289 |
"Its [Egoism's] only mistake, but a fatal one, is to confuse
individuality with personality." |
There's presumably a fine distinction here, but I would say we should
all have a bit of both. |
| | |
"There is no mind without synthesis." |
I didn't find a justification for this. |
| | |
"... the element only becomes personal when it universalizes itself." |
Presumably relates to T's distinction of personality from individuality. |
| 4.2.2 | 291 |
"Driven by forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so
that the world may come into being." |
The reason for assuming this purpose eluded me. |
| | |
"We are distressed and pained when we see modern attempts at human
collectivization ending up, contrary to our expectations and theoretical
predictions, in a lowering and an enslavement of consciousness." |
This must refer to totalitarian regimes such as held sway in the late
1930s. T says that it happens because they are too 'mechanized', whereas it
has to happen through love. |
| | 292 |
"Man's capacity, it may seem, is confined to giving his affection to one
human being or very few. Beyond that radius the heart does not carry, and
there is only room for cold justice and cold reason." |
This seems too pessimistic. Sure, the amount of 'heart' drops off with
distance, but a lot of people at least have sympathy with people far away
who may have troubles. |
| | |
"... how can we account for that irresistible instinct in our hearts
which leads us towards unity?" |
That instinct is more likely to be tied to a 'tribe' than to unity of
all mankind, which is rarer. |
| | |
"... the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty,
music" ... [points us to a] "Great Presence." |
That's one way we can conceptualize such nostalgia. But it's not the
same as love. |
| | 293 |
"A universal love is not only psychologically possible; it is the only
complete and final way in which we are able to love." |
Maybe, but most people are light years away from being able to practice
it. |
| | |
"... collectivity kills the love that is trying to come to birth." |
That's because there is usually an element of coercion - only slightly
less true of religions than of totalitarian governments or fundamentalist
'movements'. |
| 4.2.3 | 294-9 |
[All about T's concept of Omega - the end point of where it (evolution)
is all going.] |
I failed to make sense of this section. Omega is clearly the same as T's
idea of God. At least that is not a 'cosmic Saddam Hussein'. |
| 4.3 | 300 |
Super-Life: The Ultimate Earth |
In my view, this introduction is largely nonsense. |
| | |
"However convergent it be, evolution cannot attain to fulfilment on
earth except through a point of dissociation." |
I didn't find a satisfactory justification for this. |
| 4.3.1 | 303 |
"What we should expect is not a halt [to life, particularly human life,
on earth] 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 ..." |
Why? This seems to rule out any possibility of meteorite strike,
mega-epidemic etc. |
| 4.3.2 | 305 |
"... along what lines of advance, among others ... are we
destined to proceed from the planetary level of psychic totalization and
evolutionary upsurge we are now approaching?" |
|
| 4.3.2A | 306 |
[T accuses research of being too materially directed (e.g. armaments,
industrial production)] "Let us glance at the percentage of a nation's
revenue allotted in its budget for the investigation of clearly-defined
problems whose solution would be of vital consequence for the world." |
That percentage will be higher in 2015 than in 1938. 'Saving the planet'
is now an issue well to the front. |
| | 307 |
"We can envisage a world whose constantly increasing 'leisure' and
heightened interest would find their vital issue in fathoming everything ...
not only for the restricted band of paid research workers, but also for the
man in the street, the day's ideal would be the wresting of another secret
... a world in which ... one gives one's life to be and to know, rather than
to possess." |
Some of us are well on the way to that now! |
| 4.3.2B | 308 |
"A commercial market can reach saturation point ... But to all
appearances nothing on earth will ever saturate our desire for knowledge or
exhaust our power for invention." |
|
| | |
"... science has been reluctant to look man in the face ..." |
T sees not enough research looking at humans themselves. Well, that
situation has probably improved, but there are many hurdles, like ethics
committees and not being able to read another person's mind. At present the
best we can do is to localize brain waves. |
| | 310 |
"In the course of the coming centuries it is indispensable that a nobly
human form of eugenics ... should be discovered and developed." |
The Nazis gave eugenics a very bad name, and it may still not
be politically correct even to mention it. |
| | |
"If there is a future for mankind it can only be imagined in terms of a
harmonious conciliation of what is free with what is planned and totalized." |
That's true - with too much freedom, society may become unmanageable and
fall apart. |
| | 311 |
"We need and are irresistibly being led to create, by means of and
beyond all physics, all biology and all psychology, a science of human
energetics." |
I read this as 'what makes us tick', or 'what motivates us to act in one
way rather than another, or not act at all'. |
| 4.3.2C | |
"To outward appearance, the modern world was born of an anti-religious
movement: man becoming self-sufficient and reason supplanting belief." |
Some might say "religion had it coming", through its own totalitarian
tendencies. |
| | 312-3 |
"Religion and science are the two conjugated faces of phases of one and
the same complete act of knowledge ..." |
But religion as we observe it includes some aspects that are less
compatible with science, or the 'complete act of knowledge'. Examples are
old myths and traditions, disproven explanations for physical phenomena, and
self-preserving hierarchies. And the word 'religion' literally means a
'binding'; people want to be free, not bound. |
| | |
[T wants to see] "the conjunction of reason and mysticism". |
I don't think we want any old sort of mysticism, e.g. that which depends
on conjuring tricks, wishful thinking, or pseudo-science. |
| 4.3.3 | 315 |
"For these two reasons [difficulty of humans acclimatizing to another
planet, and the distances involved] among others, I adopt the supposition
that our noosphere is destined to close in upon itself in isolation, and
that it is in a psychical rather than a spatial direction that it will find
an outlet." |
So no 'boldly going' across the universe! |
| | |
"... mankind, taken as a whole, will be obliged ... to abandon
its organo-planetary foothold so as to shift its centre on to the
transcendent centre of its increasing concentration. This will be the end
and the fulfillment of the spirit of the earth." |
Thank goodness I won't be there! |
| | 316 |
"The end of the world: the overthrow of equilibrium, detaching the mind,
fulfilled at last, from its material matrix, so that it will henceforth rest
with all its weight on God--Omega." |
?? |
| | |
"The final convergence will take place in peace." [But in a
footnote, he says:] "in extreme tension". |
|
| | |
"But there is another possibility ... evil may go on growing alongside
good ..." |
|
| | 317 |
"Are we to see man seeking to fulfill himself collectively upon himself,
or personally on a greater-than-himself? Refusal or acceptance of Omega? A
conflict may supervene." |
|
| | |
[We might envisage] "The death of the materially exhausted planet, the
split of the noosphere, divided on the form to be given to its unity; and
[??] |
I found it impossible to make sense of the third part. |
| | 318 |
"Ecstasy in concord, or discord; but in either case by excess of
interior tension: the only biological outcome proper to or conceivable for
the phenomenon of man." |
|
| | |
"To make room for thought in the world, I have needed to 'interiorize'
matter ..." |
And that's something that many of us won't be able to take on board. |
| | |
|
|
Epi-
logue | 319 |
The Christian Phenomenon
|
|
| | 320 |
"Either the whole construction of the world presented here is vain
ideology or, somewhere around us, in one form or another, some excess of
personal, extra-human energy should be perceptible to us if we look
carefully, and should reveal to us the great Presence. |
I think the majority will take the first option. But we might be
throwing out the baby with the bath water. |
| | 320-1 |
"... a personal God: God as providence, directing the universe with
loving watchful care ..." |
To me, this seems a model - maybe even a myth - that many people today
can manage without, and still have good philosophies and love the Good. |
| | 321 |
People shouldn't reduce Christianity "to a sort of gentle philanthropism". |
Maybe, but this would be an improvement in many people's hearts. |
| | 323 |
"Christian love is incomprehensible to those who have not experienced
it." |
This sounds like claiming a monopoly on love of the Good. |
| | 324 |
"... is it not a fact ... that if the love of God were extinguished in
the souls of the faithful, the enormous edifice of rites, of hierarchy and
of doctrines that comprise the Church would instantly revert to the dust
from which it rose?" |
I ask myself the reverse question: "if that enormous edifice were to
instantly revert to dust, would the love of the Good be extinguished?" In my
opinion it would not. |
| | |
He claims that ancient religions, with their "untenable myths" and
"pessimistic and passive mysticism", if not already killed off, will soon
be; while Christianity is vigorous and is forging ahead. |
1) many Christian leaders are nervous about embracing the sort of
thinking T offers; 2) many believers want 'old-time religion' rather
than Jesuitical mumbo-jumbo; and 3) Christianity seems no more vigorous than
Islam or Buddhism. Also, fundamentalist Christianity is not without its own
'untenable myths', like 6-day creation. |
| | 326 |
"... is not the Christian faith destined, is it not preparing, to save
and even to take the place of evolution?" |
I would say no, it isn't. This is fanciful wishful thinking. |
| | |
"And at the present moment, Christianity is the unique current of
thought, on the entire surface of the noosphere, which is sufficiently
audacious ... to lay hold of the world ..." |
It might be if all Christians were as audacious as T, but I doubt
if they will (or be able) to follow. |
| P.S. | 328 |
The Essence of the Phenomenon of Man |
This was written later than the main book. T doesn't seem to feel any
need to change much - it's a case of 'Je ne regrette rien'. |
| | |
[T returns to the idea of 'involution'.] |
That really is a very arcane concept - not one easily envisaged. |
| | 330 |
[Before the threshold of reflection is crossed,] "the universe ...
proceeds step by step by dint of billionfold trial and error." [Afterwards,]
"the play of 'planned' or 'invented' combinations comes into the picture,
and to some extent supplants that of fortuitous combinations that 'just
happen'." |
Like gunpowder, TNT, nylon etc I suppose. |
| | 331-2 |
[The] "new form of biological existence" [after crossing the threshold,
is 1) emergence of invention over chance arrangements; 2) dominance of
attraction and repulsion between intelligent beings over their equivalent in
non-living matter; and 3) the demand for "boundless super-life" and
"irreversibility".] |
I can see the first two, but not the third. |
| | 333 |
[T doesn't like a distinction to be made between evolution of social
complexity and evolution of physical (including brain) forms.] |
|
| | 334 |
"How can we fail to see ... it is still the same cyclone (only now on
the social scale) which is still blowing over our heads?" |
The 'cyclone' is presumably of evolution, extended according to T's
argument. This argument is largely 'over my head'! |
| | 336-7 |
[T asks 3 'final' questions: a)] "what place remains for freedom (and
hence for the possibility of a setback in the world?" [his answer seems very
vague. b)] "what value must be given to spirit (as opposed to matter)?" [his
answer after some wanderings, is "primacy of the spirit". c)] "what is the
distinction between God and the world ...?" [to which his answer is] "the
reflective centres of the world are effectively 'one with God". |
|
| App | 339 |
Some remarks on the Place and Part of Evil in a World in Evolution |
I find these remarks singularly unhelpful, and little better than a
'cop-out'. |
| | 339-40 |
[T only thinks of evil in 4 categories.] |
|
| | |
"Evil of disorder and failure" |
Aren't these just part of life which we have to work in with? |
| | |
"Evil of decomposition ... sickness and corruption invariably result
from unhappy chance." |
Same as above. |
| | |
"Evil of solitude and anxiety" |
Presumably this relates to the 'disquiet' he talks about. But I don't
see it as 'evil' |
| | |
"The evil of growth" [i.e. how we 'pay' for the advances we achieve]. |
Seems to equate with "no pain, no gain". Again, why is this evil? |
| | 341 |
"... a universe which labours, which sins, and which suffers." |
Labour and suffering are surely our 'lot'; and 'sin' implies somebody's
judgment as to what qualifies. |
| | |
?? |
So, what about hate, repulsion, egotism, inhumanity to man and nature? |
| | |
"... I do not feel I am in a position to take a stand." |
That's either an admission of not understanding, or an avoidance of the
issue - maybe T did not wish to upset the orthodox line; as we know his
views on 'original sin' were not approved of by his superiors in the Church. |
I think one can fairly criticize this book on two counts, namely style and
direction.
On style, who does T expect to read this book? I think most of the priests
and ministers I have met in my life would have difficulty following it. My
father, who was a Methodist lay preacher, had originally given the copy of the book
which I now have as a
present to one of my uncles. My uncle was a good Christian, but I expect he would have
struggled with it at least as much - if not more - than I (a long-standing
reader of religious books) have. The book reached me via my cousin, son of the
uncle above. I have to assume that my father (a PhD in Mathematics) had read it,
and presumably thought it was good - although he did not live long enough for he
and I to discuss it.
Scientists, from those I have met or read, would probably be a lot more
critical than I am. Although T left out religious talk to the very end, he
doesn't offer any of the familiar components of science reporting such as
observation or testing of hypotheses. He does say that science needs to better
address the 'whole human', but he can only speculate on what humans are likely
to think. Scientists will also be very doubtful about his attempt to ascribe a
'psyche' to inert matter, or to pre-life. Clearly, to provide consistency for
his general drift, he feels the need to have a psyche (his 'within') present
from the very beginning of the universe.
On the more mundane front of the style of writing, he introduces horrible
neologisms which, having once introduced, he expects readers to be instantly at
one with. Many of them suggest that he has 'engineered' his neologisms to
support his agenda. He is not very tolerant of any other interpretation that
readers might make.
For the 'man in the street', who is probably becoming ever more intolerant of
wordiness and convoluted arguments, the book can be of little value. And no-one
will be cowed with rhetoric such as "How can we fail to see that .. ?." and the
like.
On direction, he seems to have presumed the 'incontestable' philosophy that
evolution must be going 'somewhere', and that his idea of that direction is the
only one possible. To anyone but those fully steeped in certain types of
theology, such a direction seems entirely conjectural. His argument that if we
can't see an 'unbounded future' and 'irreversibility' we will give up trying, or
"go on strike", doesn't wash.
Although he attempts to present evolution as seamlessly continuous from inert
matter, through unintelligent life, through higher mammals, to man, he does
emphasize a big break at the "threshold of reflection". I don't see that as
clear cut as he does. Were the first humans in their caves that much more
reflective than some dogs, or than the magpies that turn up at the same time
each day before my wife puts the bacon scraps out on the lawn? And what about
the ability to remember - elephants can!
Can I still say something good about the book? I think I can. It certainly
had me thinking in a few new directions, although I often struggled to see his
point. It has to be creditable to make an argument based on the assumption that
it is evolution which best explains 'how things change'. This is useful
at a time when some fundamentalists want us to scrap the idea and go back
to 6-day creation - or the equivalent in the 'revelations' given in other
one-off sacred writings. He did his best to keep religious language until the very
end, though some of his horrible neologisms seemed like religious concepts
masquerading as scientific ones.
As a lighthearted signing-off, I think a set of words that is totally out of
spirit with Teilhard's drift is: "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever
shall be, world without end."
I had planned to write my own essay which would try to present an argument in
the same general direction, but one that I personally could go along with. Maybe
some time!
