Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881–1955)

Since his student years in the Auvergne region of central France, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was devoted to both science and religion; he specialized in geology and paleontology. After teaching the natural sciences in Egypt, he studied theology in England where he later became a Jesuit priest. As a result of reading Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution (1907), Teilhard embraced the sweeping temporal perspective of organic evolution. After becoming ensnared in the infamous Piltdown man fossil discovery (this specimen was later proven to be a hoax), he returned to France to become a stretcher bearer during World War I. He had several mystical experiences in the trenches and would later have a mystical experience of planetary scope while doing research in the Ordos Desert of Inner Mongolia. His ongoing dedication to historical geology more and more convinced him of the necessity to take organic evolution seriously in both his scientific and religious reflections.

Teilhard sought to reconcile evolutionary science with Christian theology. But, as a consequence of now introducing evolution into his own lectures and writings, he was silenced by the Roman Catholic Church. Briefly, his scientific view of time was not compatible with the religious conception of creation. However, with fortunate irony, his Jesuit superiors exiled him to China where he had to limit his academic activities to geological investigations and scientific publications.

While a geologist at the Cenozoic Laboratory of the Peking Union Medical College, Teilhard became involved with the excavations in the western hills near the village of Zhoukoudian. At this site, he participated in the discovery of the fossil remains of Peking man (Sinanthropus pekinensis), a hom-inid form that existed in China about 350,000 years ago. This evidence strengthened Teilhard's commitment to organic evolution in general and human evolution in particular. His numerous articles increased his growing reputation as a prominent geopaleontologist. Likewise, Teilhard became very concerned about the far-reaching consequences of human evolution for understanding and appreciating the true place of our own species within cosmic time and earth history.

Now having ample time to rigorously reflect on his unique experiences as a Jesuit scientist, Teilhard decided to write a book that would present a comprehensive view of the meaning and purpose of evolving humankind within this unfolding universe; he had expanded his vision to encompass the remote past and the distant future. The result was his major systematic work, The Phenomenon of Man (first published in 1955 in a French edition). It offered a philosophical worldview that boldly attempted to reconcile science and theology within an evolutionary framework. The Vatican and the Jesuit order were so alarmed by his unorthodox ideas about God, evil, free will, original sin, and personal immortality that Teilhard's book was not published until after his death.

Taking the vastness of evolutionary time seriously, Teilhard saw this universe as a cosmogenesis; creation was not a single event that happened in [Page 1224]the past but is an ongoing process of creativity in terms of ever-increasing complexity and ever-centralizing consciousness. He maintained that the unity of this universe is ultimately grounded in units of spiritual energy that have been becoming more and more concentrated throughout cosmic history. Actually, his cosmology is essentially a planetology grounded in a spiraling sequence of global spheres.

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