The Phenomenon of Man

Fülszöveg

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was bom in Auvergne in France in 1881 and died in 1955. He fits into no familiar categories as he was at once a biologist and palaeontologist of world renown, and also a Jesuit father. Long before his work was published his name was a byword in scientific circles both in France and elsewhere. He himself spent a good deal of his life outside his native country, in China (where he played a major role in the discovery of Peking Man in 1929) and latterly in the United States.
As Teilliard de Chardin was an original thinker of something that might be called genius, a brief summary can do no more than indicate the breadth and significance of his thought. But it can be said that he applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to die concept of building up a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, that would relate the facts of religious experience to those of natiu^ science.... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was bom in Auvergne in France in 1881 and died in 1955. He fits into no familiar categories as he was at once a biologist and palaeontologist of world renown, and also a Jesuit father. Long before his work was published his name was a byword in scientific circles both in France and elsewhere. He himself spent a good deal of his life outside his native country, in China (where he played a major role in the discovery of Peking Man in 1929) and latterly in the United States.
As Teilliard de Chardin was an original thinker of something that might be called genius, a brief summary can do no more than indicate the breadth and significance of his thought. But it can be said that he applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to die concept of building up a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, that would relate the facts of religious experience to those of natiu^ science. The Phenomenon of Man is Pere TeiUiard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought. Its subject could be described as the surging evolution of the world from the primal stuff of the universe, through Hfe, to consciousness and man.
The Phenomenon of Man cannot be said to be an easy work, but it is a key book of our time, and once readers have made an effort to get inside it they may feel rewarded by the poetry of Pere Teilhard's vision of the universe. For this remarkable scientist and scholar was also a visionary who looked forward with confidence to man's further development. As Sir JuUan Huxley says, concluding his introduction : ' We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense fumre, and can realise more and more of them on condition that we increase our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me, is the distillation of The Phenomenon of Man.'
Jacket design by Kenneth Farnhill
THE AUTHOR
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was one of eleven children, the son of a small landowner in Auvergne. From the age of ten, when he was sent as a boarder to a Jesuit College he became interested in geology and minerology. At eighteen he joined the Jesuit Order and at twenty-four he was sent out to teach physics and chemistry at the Jesuit College in Cairo. After three years in Egypt and a further four at Hastings, he acquired real competence in geology and palaeontology (the study of fossils). He was ordained priest, returning to Paris in 1912. Here, studying in the Institute of Human Palaeontology at the Museum of Natural History, he met his life-long friend and colleague in the study of pre-history, the Abbé Breuil, and here his interests were first directed to the subject which was to become the centre of his life's work— the evolution of man.
In 1922 he took his doctorate at the Sorbonne. In 1923 he went to China as a member of a palaeontological expedition and there he was to stay, with .brief returns to France and excursions to other cotmtries, for twenty-three years.
On his return to France in 1946 scientific honours were showered tipon him, including the Legion of Honour. In 1951 he moved to New York where he spent the last four years of his life under the auspices of the Wetmer-Gren Foundation.
After his death his friends and admirers set up two committees—one scientific and one general—and it is through those very distinguished todies that his works came to be pubUshed. The publication in Paris and later in London of The Phenomenon of Man was not only pronounced one of the outstanding intellectual events of the century, but scored a great popular success; this was followed by Le Milieu Divin which was first published in English in i960.
It is our intention to continue with the publication in English of Father Teilhard's other works.
The Phenomenon of Man
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
A uniquely enthusiastic Press
ARNOLD TOYNBEE, Observer: This is a great book. Its subject i" '•He sum of things: nothing less than God and the universi Teilhard sees and presents the universe in evolution, but ct the same time a unity. His vision of unity meets a spiritual need of our time.
JOHN STEWART COLLIS, Sunday Times: This book is a landmark in modem thought which we cannot afford to pass by.
BERNARD TOWERS, The Tablet: The result is magnificent. One can only urge all thinking Catholics to read him now.
The Times: What will, perhaps, most impress the layman is the poetry which wells up behind the logic of the remarkable man's mind.
STUART HOLROYD: He has created a synthesis of evolutionary science and rehgious doctrine that has the lucidity and sweep of Aquinas' Summa Theologia.
COLLINS Vissza