It has become very difficult, in the world’s present state of upheaval and distraction, to form any idea of the significance of what is going on except by rising above the individual level.
from A Great Event Foreshadowed: The Planetization of Mankind (1945)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist. His early years were spent as a professor of geology at the Catholic Institute in Paris. After serving in the French army during World War I, de Chardin spent many years in China, India and Java studying evolution and the development of the human species, took part in the discovery of Peking Man, and became director of the National Geologic Survey of China and director of the National Research Center of France.
He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of the noösphere.
Although many of Teilhard's writings were censored by the Catholic Church during his lifetime because of his views on original sin, Teilhard has been posthumously praised by Pope Benedict XVI and other eminent Catholic figures, and his theological teachings were cited by Pope Francis in the 2015 encyclical, Laudato si'. The response to his writings by evolutionary biologists has been, with some exceptions, decidedly negative.
Frequently mentions:
Alphabetic
Date
Duration
Word Count
Popularity
Date
December 25, 1945
Type
Essay
Word Count
4,744
Reading time
≈ 26 minutes
Quotes
15
Views
1,000
Written in Peking in December 1945. Published in the August-September 1946 edition of Cahiers du Monde Nouveau with the title La planétisation humaine.
Date
August 10, 1920
Type
Essay
Word Count
4,502
Reading time
≈ 25 minutes
Quotes
6
Views
94
Written in Paris and published posthumously in The Future of Man.
Date
April 24, 1916
Type
Essay
Word Count
22,463
Reading time
≈ 2.1 hours
Quotes
33
Views
1,016
Cosmic Life was the first of Teilhard’s extant writings in his characteristic style. Knowing what risks he was exposed to at the warfront, he wrote it as his intellectual testament, and it contains in embryo all that was later to be developed in his thought; the “fire in his vision” which he tried to communicate. The essay was posthumously published in the 1955 book Writings in Time of War.
Date
April 27, 1950
Type
Essay
Word Count
2,475
Reading time
≈ 14 minutes
Quotes
1
Views
166
First published in Almanach des Sciences, 1951, then in The Future of Mankind.
Date
January 6, 1950
Type
Essay
Word Count
2,125
Reading time
≈ 12 minutes
Quotes
4
Views
109
Written in Paris and published posthumously in The Future of Man.
Date
March 10, 1945
Type
Essay
Word Count
8,468
Reading time
≈ 47 minutes
Quotes
4
Views
161
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin explores the concept of complexification in the universe, focusing on the ever-increasing combination of smaller elements into larger structures, and then extrapolates this behavior to humanity's current situation. What if the human species is an intermediary evolutionary stage, and what would the next rung on the ladder look like? Teilhard suggests that it will involve the merging-together of all humanity into a divine, planetized consciousness. Originally delivered as a lecture at the French Embassy in Peking (Beijing), China, later published in Études and The Future of Man.
Date
April 23, 1948
Type
Essay
Word Count
399
Reading time
≈ 2 minutes
Views
2
Date
January 6, 1950
Type
Essay
Word Count
3,177
Reading time
≈ 18 minutes
Quotes
2
Views
251
An originally unpublished essay, written in Paris, in which Teilhard talks about a vast realm of the Ultra-Human which lies ahead of us: a realm in which we shall not be able to survive, or super-live, except by developing and embracing on earth, to the utmost extent, all the powers of common vision and unanimazation that are available to us. Eventually published in The Future of Man.
Date
April 27, 1952
Type
Essay
Word Count
5,323
Reading time
≈ 30 minutes
Quotes
13
Views
60
Published in Revue des Questions Scientifiques, and later in Activation of Energy.
Date
January 18, 1953
Type
Essay
Word Count
1,824
Reading time
≈ 10 minutes
Quotes
4
Published in Psyché, and later in Activation of Energy.
Date
1961
Type
Video
Word Count
2,036
Duration
18:41
Quotes
3
Views
563
Date
1961
Type
Video
Word Count
1,190
Duration
10:37
Quotes
2
Views
271
Date
1961
Type
Video
Word Count
2,638
Duration
22:13
Quotes
6
Views
419
Date
1961
Type
Video
Word Count
1,971
Duration
19:34
Quotes
8
Views
222
Date
June 10, 1945
Type
Essay
Word Count
2,767
Reading time
≈ 15 minutes
Views
2
Written in Peking (Beijing), later published in Activation of Energy.
Date
September 13, 1941
Type
Essay
Word Count
11,702
Reading time
≈ 1 hour
Quotes
20
Views
209
An attempt to understand the structure of the universe's substance, and how it can give rise to consciousness. Written in Beijing and published in Activation of Energy.
Date
July 23, 1951
Type
Essay
Word Count
4,378
Reading time
≈ 24 minutes
Quotes
15
Views
645
Date
December 9, 1952
Type
Essay
Word Count
1,926
Reading time
≈ 11 minutes
Quotes
3
Views
142
Written in New York and published a year later in Psyché.
Date
February 2, 1949
Type
Essay
Word Count
1,686
Reading time
≈ 9 minutes
Quotes
2
Views
78
“A biological approach to the problem.” Written in response to a questionnaire from UNESCO and later published in The Future of Man.
Date
January 1947
Type
Essay
Word Count
9,448
Reading time
≈ 52 minutes
Quotes
16
Views
1,493
The noösphere is the sum-total of mental activity which emerges out of a complex biosphere, and in this essay Teilhard describes how our planet is growing its very own mind. Published in Revue des Questions Scientifiques (Louvain) and later The Future of Man.
Date
March 3, 1939
Type
Essay
Word Count
7,893
Reading time
≈ 44 minutes
Quotes
9
Views
91
Published in Cahiers Du Monde Nouveau in 1945.
Date
September 23, 1947
Type
Essay
Word Count
5,513
Reading time
≈ 31 minutes
Quotes
20
Views
65
This essay, published in Revue des Questions Scientifiques in 1948 and reprinted in The Future of Man, follows Teilhard's train of thought on the aftermath of a potential fusing-together of humanity.
Date
1955
Type
Book
Word Count
97,981
Reading time
≈ 9.1 hours
Quotes
116
Views
1,761
Visionary theologian and evolutionary theorist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect, and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile religion with the scientific theory of evolution. In this timeless book (whose original French title better translates to ‘The Human Phenomenon’), Teilhard argues that just as living organisms sprung from inorganic matter and evolved into ever more complex thinking beings, humans are evolving toward an "omega point"—defined by Teilhard as a convergence with the Divine.
Date
January 1, 1951
Type
Essay
Word Count
11,703
Reading time
≈ 1 hour
Quotes
23
Views
352
Date
January 16, 1947
Type
Essay
Word Count
2,810
Reading time
≈ 16 minutes
Quotes
11
Views
279
Teilhard argues that biology and technology are the same thing: technology is simply advanced biology which has reached a minimum threshold of self-awareness, allowing it to harvest and sheperd energy from its environment and utilize it to intelligently organize matter for further evolutionary development. Written after an address given in Paris at the Salle d’horticulture (National Society of Horticulture).
Date
December 20, 1947
Type
Essay
Word Count
4,175
Reading time
≈ 23 minutes
Quotes
10
Views
112
Is there in the universe a main axis of evolution? (An attempt to see clearly)
Date
January 6, 1949
Type
Essay
Word Count
3,023
Reading time
≈ 17 minutes
Quotes
2
Views
1
First published in Psyché, later in Activation of Energy.
Date
July 14, 1953
Type
Essay
Word Count
3,061
Reading time
≈ 17 minutes
Quotes
5
Views
3
Written during Teilhard's passage from New York City to the Cape Peninsula, as he was in view of Saint Helena. Later published in Activation of Energy.
Date
November 19, 1951
Type
Essay
Word Count
3,416
Reading time
≈ 19 minutes
Quotes
10
Views
114