| THE PHENOMENON OF MAN Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Bernard Wall (Transl.) Sir Julian Huxley (Intro.) New York: Harper & Row, 1959 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| LibCong 59-5154 | 320pp. | SC | $? | |
Bernard Wall leads off this book with a Translator's Note in which he discusses some of the problems he faced.1 Among them was the fact that Père Teilhard coined his own words (e.g. homanization, noösphere). He writes of having had the assistance of others with the translation. To me, it seems as if the services of a French-speaking physicist would have been of immense help in clarifying Teilhard's opening chapter.
Next comes the Introduction, in which Sir Julian Huxley rates The Phenomenon of Man as "certainly the most important of Père Teilhard's published works" and praises it as "a very remarkable work by a very remarkable human being". Most of Huxley's 18-page Introduction is devoted to an explanation of Teilhard's thesis. If I may put that in my own words, that thesis is: that man is a phenomenon to be studied scientifically like any other; that no knowledge, no object of scientific study, can be correctly interpreted except as part of an evolutionary process; and that the universe must be considered an organic unity with every part interacting with every other, while the whole inevitably develops toward forms of greater complexity.
Corollaries of this thesis are that mankind is unfinished, that humanity will continue to evolve psychosocially and physically to greater capability and awareness, to a greater degree of cooperation with other individuals, and to greater intellectual integration with the rest of the natural world.2 Huxley puts it compellingly on page 13:
The different branches of science combine to demonstrate that the universe in its entirety must be regarded as one gigantic process, a process of becoming, of attaining new levels of existence and organisation, which can properly be called a genesis or an evolution. For this reason, he uses words like noögenesis, to mean the gradual evolution of mind or mental properties, and repeatedly stresses that we should no longer speak of a cosmology but of a cosmogenesis. Similarly, he likes to use a pregnant term like homanisation to denote the process by which the original proto-human stock became (and is still becoming) more truly human, the process by which potential man realised more and more of his possibilities. Indeed, he extends this evolutionary terminology by employing terms like ultra-homanisation to denote the deducible future stage of the process in which man will have so far transcended himself to demand some new appellation. With this approach he is rightly and indeed inevitably driven to the conclusion that, since evolutionary phenomena (of course including the phenomenon known as man) are processes, they can never be evaluated or even adequately described solely or mainly in terms of their origins : they must be defined by their direction, their inherent possibilities (including of course also their limitations), and their deducible future trends. He quotes with approval Nietzche's view that man is unfinished and must be surpassed or completed ; and proceeds to deduce the steps needed for his completion. |
Huxley is persuasive in ascribing great merit to Teilhard's work. But, as he points out, there are passages in it which are obscure or seemingly contradictory. In any case, the Jesuit Father's words must stand on their own.
Teilhard's own Preface is good; his Foreword, SEEING, is generally so. It sets forth his top-level organization of the work:
Then we come to his opening chapter, THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE3, which overall is quite impenetrable. This obscurity is not so much the result of unclear sentences, but of imprecise use of terms. He interchanges, seemingly at whim, terms which physics has given precise and exclusive meanings: atom, molecule, quantum, electron, and others. Then he ignores the differences between them — as in this passage from page 41 (emphasis in original):
On the other hand the more we split and pulverise matter artificially, the more insistently it proclaims its fundamental unity. In its most imperfect form, but the simplest to imagine, this unity reveals itself in the astonishing similarity of the elements met with. Molecules, atoms, electrons—whatever the name, whatever the scale—these minute units (at any rate when viewed from our distance) manifest a perfect unity of mass and of behaviour. In their dimensions and actions they seem astonishingly calibrated—and monotonous. It is almost as if all that surface play which charms our lives tends to disappear at deeper levels. It is almost as if the stuff of which all stuff is made were reducible in the end to some simple and unique kind of substance. |
Physicists have taught us that the uniformity of the "building blocks" of the world increases as our view progresses to smaller and smaller scales. Living creatures exist in millions of discrete varieties, molecules in thousands, atoms in just over 100 kinds, elementary particles in perhaps 12, and quarks — the most basic known — in just 3.4 But there are vast and vital dishomogeneities between and within these classifications of matter. Teilhard's view is thus a gross oversimplification.
But some passages are just obscure — like this one from page 43 (emphasis in original):
Up to now we have been looking at matter as such, that is to say according to its qualities and in any given volume—as though it were permissible for us to break off a fragment and study this sample apart from the rest. It is time to point out that this procedure is merely an intellectual dodge. Considered in its physical, concrete reality, the stuff of the universe cannot divide itself but, as a kind of gigantic "atom", it forms in its totality (apart from thought on which it is centred and concentrated at the other end) the only real indivisible. The history of consciousness and its place in the world remain incomprehensible to anyone who has not seen first of all that this cosmos in which man finds himself caught up constitutes, by reason of the unimpeachable wholeness of its whole, a system, a totum, and a quantum : a system by its plurality, a totum by its unity, a quantum by its energy ; all three within a boundless contour. Let us try to make this clear. |
Oh, yes, please!
And some, like this one from page 47, are both clear and graceful.
In essence, the change wrought in our experience by the appearance of what we shall soon call space-time is this, that everything that up to then was regarded and treated as points in our cosmological constructions became instantaneous sections of indefinite temporal fibres. To our opened eyes each element of things is henceforth extended backwards (and tends to be continued forwards) as far as the eye can see in such a way that the entire spatial immensity is no more than a section "at the time t" of a trunk whose roots plunge down into the abyss of an unfathomable past, and whose branches rise up somewhere to a future that, at first sight, has no limit. |
This admixture of clear and obscure passages continues in Chapter 2, THE WITHIN OF THINGS, which is the beginning of Teilhard's explanation of his attempt to unify the material (scientific) and spiritual realms of human experience. The chapter starts off impressively:
On the scientific plane, the quarrel between materialists and upholders of a spiritual interpretation, between finalists and determinists, still endures. After a century of disputation each side remains in its original position and gives its adversaries solid reasons for remaining there. So far as I understand the struggle, in which I have found myself involved, it seems to me that its prolongation depends less on the difficulty that the human mind finds in reconciling certain apparent contradictions in nature—such as mechanism and liberty, or death and immortality—as in the difficulty experienced by two schools of thought in finding a common ground. On the one hand the materialists insist on talking about objects as though they only consisted of external actions in transient relationships. On the other hand the upholders of a spiritual interpretation are obstinately determined not to go outside a kind of solitary introspection in which things are only looked upon as being shut in upon themselves in their "immanent" workings. Both fight on different planes and do not meet ; each only sees half the problem. I am convinced that the two points of view require to be brought into union, and that they soon will unite in a kind of phenomenology or phýsic in which the internal aspect of things as well as the external aspect of the world will be taken into account. Otherwise, so it seems to me, it is impossible to cover the totality of the cosmic phenomenon by one coherent explanation which science must try to construct. |
This passage, from page 53, certainly is a coherent explanation. It accords with a view I have long held, that science and religion are not fundamentally incompatible. But it is a big jump from there to any theory that actually demonstrates that compatibility. And soon more passages appear that to me are obscure or indefensible. From page 56 (emphasis in original):
Latterly we have experienced it too often to admit of any further doubt: an irregularity in nature is only the sharp exacerbation, to the point of perceptible disclosure, of a property of things diffused throughout the universe, in a state which eludes our recognition of its presence. Properly observed, even if only in one spot, a phenomenon necessarily has an omnipresent value and roots by reason of the fundamental unity of the world. *
* * It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves, an "interior" appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent. This is enough to ensure that, to one degree or another, this "interior" should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily a double aspect to its structure, that is to say in every region of space and time—in the same way, for instance, as it is granular: co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things. |
Regrettably, I find this smacks of the argument from authority. A more charitable interpretation is that Teilhard asserts here what he feels he has proven later in the book. (He has mentioned that this chapter overlaps with LIFE and THOUGHT.) Yet his constant assumption that everything is co-extensive with everything else bothers me no end. This discomfort is given a sharp exacerbation by his use of the "royal we", which in this passage makes it hard to determine if he is talking about his own experiences, or those of everyone.
The central problem of this chapter, I think, is that Père Teilhard, a devout and spiritual man, assumes that the psychic energies exist and then sets out to construct a framework of thought to explain them. Witness this passage from page 62:
There is no concept more familiar to us than spiritual energy, yet there is none that is more opaque scientifically. On the one hand the objective reality of psychical effort and work is so well established that the whole of ethics rests on it and, on the other hand, the nature of this inner power is so intangible that the whole description of the universe in mechanical terms has had no need to take account of it, but has been successfully completed in deliberate disregard of its reality. *
* * Naturally the following considerations do not pretend to be a truly satisfactory solution to the problem of spiritual energy. Their aim is merely to show by means of one example what, in my opinion, an integral science of nature should adopt as its line of research and the kind of interpretation it should follow. |
This disclaimer is welcome, for I found the remainder of the chapter, with its talk of radial and tangential energies, largely incomprehensible.
Chapter 3 explores the nature of conditions on the early Earth, newly condensed out of the primordial cloud of gas and dust. Here, in my opinion, Teilhard largely gets it right if his unique terminology is overlooked. In his conception, each of the multitude of particles making up the nascent planet harbored an "elementary consciousness". Here's how he explains it at the end of the chapter, on page 74 (emphasis in original):
Here again, but in a better defined field and on a higher level, we find the fundamental condition characteristic of primordial matter—the unity of plurality. The earth was probably born by accident ; but, in accordance with one of the most general laws of evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was immediately made use of and recast into something naturally directed. By the very mechanism of its birth, the film in which the "within" of the earth was concentrated and deepened emerges in our eyes in the form of an organic whole in which no element can any longer be separated from those surrounding it. Another "indivisible" has appeared at the heart of the great "indivisible" which is the universe. In truth, a pre-biosphere. And this is the envelope which, taken in its entirety, is to be our sole preoccupation from now on. As we continue peering into the abysses of the past, we can see its colour changing. From age to age it increases in intensity. Something is going to burst out upon the early earth, and this thing is Life. |
At the topmost (i.e. most abstract) level, this sounds a lot like Robert Shapiro's "Life Principle" (see my review in this section). On that level, I can accept it. But let's see how the good Father elucidates his reasoning as we proceed into Book Two.
In that Book, he presents a survey of the taxonomy of life, proceeding from its dimly seen origins in the primordial ooze, relentlessly proliferating in a fantastic diversity of forms through various phyla, orders and families to the placental mammals. At the beginning of its final chapter, DEMETER, he postulates that expansion of diversity, this continual growth of complexity has a purpose (pages 141-2, emphasis in original):
That there is an evolution of one sort or another is now, as I have said, common ground among scientists. Whether or not that evolution is directed is another question. Asked whether life is going anywhere at the end of its transformations, nine biologists out of ten will today say no, even passionately. *
* * Science in its development—and even, as I shall show, mankind in its march—is marking time at this moment, because men's minds are reluctant to recognise that evolution has a precise orientation and a privileged axis. Weakened by this fundamental doubt, the forces of research are scattered, and there is no determination to build the earth. Leaving aside all anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism, I believe I can see a direction and a line of progress for life, a line and a direction which are in fact so well marked that I am convinced their reality will be universally admitted by the science of tomorrow. And I want here to make the reader understand why. |
And this direction, he explains, is the expansion of consciousness within, as revealed without by the increasing sophistication of the nervous system, which (so far) has reached its highest level in our own species.
Chapter 2 of Book 3 confirms a suspicion I've held almost from the beginning: This is a poor translation. The very first paragraph of the chapter is evidence. (Page 191)
In order to multiply the contacts necessary for its gropings and to be able to store up the multifarious variety of its riches, life is obliged to move forward in terms of deep masses. And when therefore its course emerges from the gorges in which a new mutation has so to speak strangled it, the narrower the channel from which it emerges and the vaster the surface it has to cover with its flow, the more it needs to re-group itself in multitude. |
I translate this translation thus:5 "In order to keep evolving by means of chance mutations, and to preserve these evolutionary changes from generation to generation, life must proliferate in vast numbers." Surely, Mr. Wall had time for some "gropings" of his own, in search of English words more apt to the deeper — as opposed to the literal — meaning of the French text he was translating. But evidently he did not bother. This lack doubtlessly explains much of the difficulty I've had with the book.6 Someday I'll find a better translation; in the meantime I will persevere with this one.
And henceforth I'll stop complaining about awkward or unclear wording. But I'll continue to record any errata I find.
Teilhard, in this chapter, mixes fact and conjecture. He discusses the fossils of Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus, noting that their structure places them between apes and man, and that most paleontologists classify them as "pre-hominids". Then, in what can only be called speculation, he asserts that "they were already, in the full sense of the term, intelligent beings". (He does, however, stipulate that this does not mean intelligence on our present-day level.) His justification for this conclusion seems to be that such a radical mutation as the ability to think had to have appeared contemporaneously with major morphological changes. As he puts it on page 195 (emphasis in original):
That they were so seems to me stipulated by the general mechanism of phylogenesis. A mutation as fundamental as that of thought, a mutation which gives its specific impetus to the whole human group, could not in my opinion have appeared in the middle of the journey ; it could not have happened half-way up the stalk. It dominates the whole edifice. Its place must therefore be beneath every recognisable verticil in the unattainable depths of the peduncle, and thus beneath those creatures which (however pre-hominid in cranial structure) are already clearly situated above the point of origin and blossoming of our human race. |
Luckily for me, the words "verticil" and "peduncle" are in any good dictionary. They mean, roughly and respectively, stalk and branching-point. Teilhard says the peduncle is unattainable because any change occurring at that point is present in one or a few individuals, and thus almost certainly missing from the fossil record. This is our view today. However, we are not so ready to pinpoint the origin of mutations which leave no morphological traces. In the case of human-level thought, we prefer to deduce its presence from behavior, as revealed by artifacts like tools, cave art, or burial gifts.
It is one of the saving graces of Teilhard's world-view, owing perhaps to his Christian spirit and his experiences in World War I, that his synthesis is profoundly egalitarian. He states this throughout the book, whenever arguing against isolation — by which he means chiefly racism or elitism — but never more clearly than on pages 244-5 of Book 4 (emphasis in original):
Also false and against nature is the racial ideal of one branch draining off for itself alone all the sap of the tree and rising over the death of other branches. To reach the sun nothing less is required than the combined growth of the entire foliage. The outcome of the world, the gates of the future, the entry into the super-human—these are not thrown open to a few of the privileged nor to one chosen people to the exclusion of all others. They will open only to an advance of all together, in a direction in which all together can join and find completion in a spiritual renovation of the earth, a renovation whose physical degree of reality we must now consider and whose outline we must now make clearer. |
To this Teilhard adds a footnote making it clear that his unified advance does not preclude the guidance of a few, an "élite". This final Book, titled SURVIVAL, focuses on evolution surviving the forces that could stifle its progress: the tendency to isolation, previously mentioned; the sense of discouragement when the goal seems so distant and short-sighted conflicts keep erupting. Profoundly hopeful, it forms a fitting cap to his long recitation on the subject of directed evolution leading inevitably toward a still-indescribable state of "ultra-homanisation".
There follows an Epilogue, THE CHRISTIAN PHENOMENON, a conclusion written ten years after the main text, and titled THE ESSENCE OF THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, and an Appendix discussing the place of evil in the world Teilhard describes. In it he remarks that he has not mentioned evil previously. This is incorrect; he has mentioned it in several places. But it is true that those mentions were brief. So, alas, is this appendix. It does make the important point, not essayed before, that evil is an integral part of the picture. So Père Teilhard (as he did in his conclusion) backs off from his claim that progress toward the super-human is inevitable, and brings his world view more closely into concert with orthodox Christian doctrine.7 His final words sum up the change (page 313):
In one manner or the other it still remains true that, even in the view of the mere biologist, the human epic resembles nothing so much as a way of the Cross. |
Although the book has a reasonably detailed index, I would not classify it as one for which an index is particularly needed, for I doubt I would ever want to seek out particular names mentioned in the text. The Phenomenon of Man has value because it is a sincere attempt to reconcile science and religion (especially evolution and Catholicism), because it may be the first book to seriously propose that Mankind is not the Crown of Creation8 but merely a step on the path toward a future entity whose nature is unknown and may be unknowable, and because of Teilhard's courageously heretical assertion that we nevertheless can learn at least something about that dimly glimpsed entity by applying to the World, our progenitors and ourselves the tools of science.
Despite the fact that its mystical tone makes for hard going in many places, I recommend reading this book — but only in a better translation than Bernard Wall's or, if you are up to it, in the original French. (I would guess that a modern translation may exist, perhaps bearing a title such as The Collected Works of Teilhard du Chardin.) I would NOT recommend buying a copy for casual reading. But if you are a book collector, some early editions of Teilhard's works may be worth acquiring.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.