Teilhard de Chardin- Le Ph�nom�ne humain, 1955:
"But why should there be unification in the world and what purpose
does it serve? To see the answer to this ultimate question, we have only to
put side by side the two equations which have been gradually formulating
themselves from the moment we began trying to situate the phenomenon of man
in the world:
Evolution = Rise of consciousness
Rise of consciousness = Union effected -
Geologist, paleontologist, Jesuit priest, and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin (1881-1955) was born in Sarcenat, France. He lectured in pure
science at the Jesuit College in Cairo, was ordained as a Jesuit priest in
1911, and in 1918 became professor of geology at the Intitut Catholique in
Paris. He went on paleontological expeditions in China and Asia, but his
unorthodox ideas at that time led to a ban on his teaching and publishing.
Nevertheless, his work in Cenozoic geology and paleontology became known,
and he was awarded academic distinctions. His major work, Le Ph�nom�ne
humain (written 1938-40, The Phenomenon of Humanity) was posthumously
published. Based on his scientific thinking, it argues that humanity is in a
continuous process of evolution towards a perfect spiritual state. From 1951
he lived in the USA. In Le Phenomene Humain Teilhard de Chardin is clearly
seen to be one of the earlier writers who have had great influence in the
gradual generic formation of the foundations of the contemporary Gaia
Hypothesis. "The general gathering together in which, by correlated actions
of the without and the within of the earth, the totality of thinking units
and thinking forces are engaged - the aggregation in a single block of a
mankind whose fragments weld together and interpenetrate before our eyes in
spite of (indeed in proportion to) their efforts to separate - all this
becomes intelligible from top to bottom as soon as we perceive it as the
natural culmination of a cosmic process of organisation which has never
varied since those remote ages when our planet was young."
An extensive and interesting extract from de Chardin's work is concluded
with the following: "The two-fold crisis whose onset began in earnest as
early as the Neolithic age and which rose to a climax in the modern world,
derives in the first place from mass-formation (we might call it a
'planetisation') of mankind. Peoples and civilisations reached such a
degree either of frontier contact or economic interdependence or psychic
communion that they could no longer develop save by interpenetration of one
another. But it also arises out of the fact that, under the combined
influence of machinery and the super-heating of thought, we are witnessing
a formidable upsurge of unused powers. Modern man no longer knows what to
do with the time and the potentialities he has unleashed. We groan under
the burden of this wealth. We are haunted by the fear of 'unemployment'.
Sometimes we are tempted to trample this super-abundance back into the
matter from from which it sprang without stopping to think how impossible
and monstrous such an act against nature would be. When we consider the
increasing compression of elements at the heart of a free energy which is
also relentlessly increasing, how can we fail to see in this two-fold
phenomenon the two perennial symptoms of a leap forward of the 'radial'-
that is to say, of a new step in the genisis of mind? In order to avoid
disturbing our habits we seek in vain to settle international disputes by
adjustments of frontiers - or we treat as 'liesure' (to be whiled away) the
activities at the disposal of mankind. As things are now going it will not
be long before we run full tilt into one another. Something will explode if
we persist in trying to squeeze into our old tumble-down huts the material
and spiritual forces that are henceforwared on the scale of a world. A new
domain of psychical expansion - that is what we lack. And it is staring us
in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it. Peace through
conquest, work in joy. These are waiting for us beyond the line where
empires are setup against other empires, in an interior totalisation of the
world upon itself, in the unanimous construction of a spirit of the earth.
For those interested in researching the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
further there is a growing amount of references on the web, and one place to
commence such a search is with a good search engine. Further Background
to Gaia "Ancient belief and modern knowledge have fused emotionally
in the awe with which astronauts with their own eyes and we by indirect
vision have seen the Earth revealed in all its shining beauty against
the deep darkness of space. Yet this feeling, however strong, does not prove
that Mother Earth lives. Like a religious belief, it is scientifically
untestable and therefore incapable in its own context of further
rationalization."
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