topics: |  philosophy | religion | evolution | biology

An widely influential mid-20th century text that claims human beings as the
culmination of the evolutionary process.  A geologist turned Jesuit priest,
this constitutes his synthesis view for the origins of the universe and human
life.  Since it contradicts the Genesis view, he was chastised by the holy
church and the book was banned in his lifetime.

At the same time, evolutionary biologists are clear that there is no
substance in any claims of "improvement" - it is all adaptation.  In
particular, there is nothing special about humans - we too will become
extinct.  See for instance Peter Medawar's scathing attack, or
several pieces in the Gould oeuvre.  Also Monod attacks "the intellectual
spinelessness of [Teilhard's] philosophy" Chance and Necessity (1972, p.32).
This arises he feels because
    We would like to think ourselves necessary, inevitable, ordained from all
    eternity. All religions, nearly all philosophies, and even a part of
    science testify to the unwearying, heroic effort of mankind desperately
    denying its own contingency. (p.44)

Outline

Teilhard views evolution as a process that leads to increasing
complexity. From the cell to the thinking animal, a process of psychical
concentration leads to greater consciousness.[169] The emergence of Homo
Sapiens marked the beginning of a new age. Reflection, the power acquired by
consciousness to turn in upon itself, raises humankind to a new sphere.[165]
Borrowing Julian Huxley's expression, Teilhard describes humankind as
evolution becoming conscious of itself.[220]

Above the material layer, a "thinking layer", or noosphere (from Gk "nous" =
mind), has enveloped the earth [278].  As a result of technology, Humanity
has become cosmopolitan, stretching in a single organized membrane over the
earth. [278]

QUOTES

 * When the end of the world is mentioned, the idea that leaps into our minds
   is always one of catastrophe.

 * “The cell has become someone. After the grain of matter, the grain of
   life; and now at last we see constituted the grain of thought.” [15]

 * “A glow ripples outward from the first spark of conscious
   reflection. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in
   ever widening circles till finally the whole planet is covered with
   incandescence. It is really a new layer, the thinking layer, which (…)
   has spread over and above the world of plants and animals. In other
   words, outside and above the biosphere there is the noosphere.” [16]

 * “With hominisation, 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.” [17]

 * “In the same beam of light the instinctive groping of the first cell
   link up with the learned gropings of our laboratories. (…) The spirit
   of research and conquest is the permanent soul of evolution.” [18]

 * “Is this not like some great body which is being born-with its limbs,
   its nervous system, its perceptive organs, its memory-the body in fact
   of that great thing which had to come to fulfill the ambitions aroused
   in the reflective being by the newly acquired consciousness that he was
   at one with and responsible to an evolutionary All?” [19]

Contents

I. The Stuff of the Universe
   1. Elemental Matter
   2. Total Matter
   3. The Evolution of Matter

II. The Within of Things
    1. Existence
    2. The Qualitative Laws of Growth
    3. Spiritual Energy

III. The Earth in its Early Stages
    1. The Without
    2. The Within

BOOK TWO: LIFE

I. The Advent of Life
   1. The Transit to Life
   2. The Initial Manifestations of Life
   3. The Season of Life

II. The Expansion of Life
   1. The Elemental Movements of Life
   2. The Ramification of the Living Mass
   3. The Tree of Life

III. Demeter
   1. Ariadne's Thread
   2. The Rise of Consciousness
   3. The Approach of Time

BOOK THREE: THOUGHT

I. The Birth of Thought
   1. The Threshold of Reflection
   2. The Original Forms

II. The Deployment of the Noosphere
   1. The Ramifying Phase of the Pre-Hominids
   2. The Group of the Neanderthaloids
   3. The Homo Sapiens Complex
   4. The Neolithic Metamorphosis
   5. The Prolongations of the Neolithic Age and the Rise of the West

III. The Modern Earth
   1. The Discovery of Evolution
   2. The Problem of Action

BOOK FOUR: SURVIVAL

I. The Collective Issue
   1. The Confluence of Thought
   2. The Spirit of the Earth

II. Beyond the Collective: The Hyper-Personal
   1. The Convergence of the Person and the Omega Point
   2. Love as Energy
   3. The Attributes of the Omega Point

III. The Ultimate Earth
   1. Prognostics to be set aside
   2. The Approaches
   3. The Ultimate

Epilogue: The Christian Phenomenon
   1. Axes of Belief
   2. Existence-Value
   3. Power of Growth

Postscript: The Essence of the Phenomenon of Man
   1. A World in Involution
   2. The First Appearance of Man
   3. The Social Phenomenon

Appendix: Some Remarks on the Place and Part of Evil in a World in Evolution