The Phenomenon of Man

The Phenomenon of Man
Author Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Original title Le phénomène humain
Translator Bernard Wall[1]
Country France
Language French
Subject Speculative philosophy, evolution
Publisher Éditions du Seuil[2] (France)
Harper & Brothers[1] (USA)
William Collins (UK)
Publication date
 1955[2]
Published in English
 1959[1]
Pages 347 (French)[2]
318 (English)[1]
LC Class BD512.T413

The Phenomenon of Man (Le phénomène humain, 1955) is a book written by the French philosopher, paleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this work, Teilhard describes evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity, culminating in the unification of consciousness.

The book was finished in the 1930s, but was published posthumously in 1955. The Roman Catholic Church initially prohibited the publication of some of Teilhard’s writings on the grounds that they contradicted orthodoxy.

The foreword to the book was written by one of the key scientific advocates for natural selection and evolution of the 20th century, and a co-developer of the modern synthesis in biology, Julian Huxley.

Summary

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.[3] The emergence of Homo sapiens marks the beginning of a new age, as the power acquired by consciousness to turn in upon itself raises humankind to a new sphere.[4] Borrowing Huxley’s expression, Teilhard describes humankind as evolution becoming conscious of itself.[5]

In Teilhard's conception of the evolution of the species, a collective identity begins to develop as trade and the transmission of ideas increases.[6] Knowledge accumulates and is transmitted in increasing levels of depth and complexity.[7] This leads to a further augmentation of consciousness and the emergence of a thinking layer that envelops the earth.[8] Teilhard calls the new membrane the “noosphere” (from the Greek “nous”, meaning mind), a term first coined by Vladimir Vernadsky. The noosphere is the collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which all are immersed.[9]

The development of science and technology causes an expansion of the human sphere of influence, allowing a person to be simultaneously present in every corner of the world. Teilhard argues that humanity has thus become cosmopolitan, stretching a single organized membrane over the Earth.[10] Teilhard describes the process by which this happens as a "gigantic psychobiological operation, a sort of mega-synthesis, the “super-arrangement” to which all the thinking elements of the earth find themselves today individually and collectively subject".[8] The rapid expansion of the noosphere requires a new domain of psychical expansion, which "is staring us in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it".[11]

In Teilhard’s view, evolution will culminate in the Omega Point, a sort of supreme consciousness. Layers of consciousness will converge in Omega, fusing and consuming them in itself.[12] The concentration of a conscious universe will reassemble in itself all consciousnesses as well as all that we are conscious of.[13] Teilhard emphasizes that each individual facet of consciousness will remain conscious of itself at the end of the process.[14]

Reception

In 1961, the Nobel Prize-winner Peter Medawar, a British immunologist, wrote a scornful review of the book for the journal Mind,[15] calling it "a bag of tricks" and saying that the author had shown "an active willingness to be deceived": "the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself".

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins called Medawar's review "devastating" , and The Phenomenon of Man "the quintessence of bad poetic science".[16]

In the June 1995 issue of Wired, Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg said, "Teilhard saw the Net coming more than half a century before it arrived":[17]

Teilhard imagined a stage of evolution characterized by a complex membrane of information enveloping the globe and fueled by human consciousness. It sounds a little off-the-wall, until you think about the Net, that vast electronic web encircling the Earth, running point to point through a nerve-like constellation of wires.

In July 2009, during a vespers service in Aosta Cathedral in northern Italy, Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on the Epistle to the Romans in which "St. Paul writes that the world itself will one day become a form of living worship", commented on Teilhard:[18]

It's the great vision that later Teilhard de Chardin also had: At the end we will have a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host. Let's pray to the Lord that he help us be priests in this sense, to help in the transformation of the world in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "The phenomenon of man". Library of Congress Catalog Record. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
  2. 1 2 3 "Le phénomène humain". Library of Congress Catalog Record. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
  3. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 169.
  4. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 165.
  5. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 220.
  6. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 205.
  7. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 178.
  8. 1 2 The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 244.
  9. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 278.
  10. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 241.
  11. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 253.
  12. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 259.
  13. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 261.
  14. ↑ The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961, p. 262.
  15. ↑ P.B. Medawar (1961). "Critical Notice". Mind. Oxford University Press. LXX: 99–106. doi:10.1093/mind/LXX.277.99.
  16. ↑ Richard Dawkins (5 April 2000). Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 320–. ISBN 0-547-34735-9.
  17. ↑ Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg (June 1995). "A Globe, Clothing Itself With a Brain". Wired. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
  18. ↑ John L. Allen Jr. (28 July 2009). "Pope cites Teilhardian vision of the cosmos as a 'living host'". National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved 24 September 2009.
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