More Teilhard de Chardin

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30965, 22 January 1966, Page 4

More Teilhard de Chardin

The Appearance Of Man. By Teilhard de Chardin. Translated by J. M. Cohen. Collins.

To those familiar with Teilhard de Chardin’s other works, this new book will be a welcome addition as it gives the scientific evidence on which he bases his philosophy. The book is a compilation of 18 essays and reports which appeared in different publications between 1913 and 1954. The majority deal with the discoveries down the years of human and prehominoid fossils. Greatest detail is given about the work of recovery of the specimens—five almost complete skulls, fragments of another three skulls, a dozen jaws and a large number of isolated teeth—of Peking man and of associated fossil fauna, a task with which Chardin was himself connected. Reports are given on progress as at 1930, 1934 and 1937.

The limits and scope of prehistory are well shown by the subject matter of the other papers: the development of the primate and simian lines during the Tertiary era; a resume of the findings of human palaeontology in its first 50 years up to 1923—Hedldeberg man, Neanderthal man and Rhodesian man; the discovery of the second Java man in 1935; and reports from 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1954 of further discoveries in Africa.

Chardin’s interpretation of this evidence changed over the rears as new discoveries wetr made, but in 1954 he had taken a fairly strong stand on his characteristic theme. The cradle of humanity was Africa although the precise development is unknown to us. From there successive radiations occurred so that the different fossils we have do not represent a continuous line of development. The Australopitthicines, of which the 50 specimens represent an already differentiated group, Chardin regards as prehominians because of their small brain size and the lack of evidence of fire or industry even though they stood upright. Contemporaneous with these but not developing from them, came true man. Two centres of development are known, the original African region from which

we have Saldanha man and Rhodian man, and AsioMalaya represented by the Java, Peking and Solo River man line, while later in Europe came the Neanderthaloids. These lines were blindending. From Africa again came Homo sapiens who gradually replaced his presapiens cousins. The first Pabble industry culture is known only from Africa, while the later Palaeolithic (Biface) culture is known in Europe (Chellean and Acheulian industries) as well as Asia and Africa.

This picture of prehistory which Chardin likens to the development of a flower inside the encircling bud scales of a stem, is presented as the experimental basis of his philosophy. Two essays, “The Phyletic Structure of the Human Group” and “The Singularities of the Human Species” together constitute over a third of the book. Here is a recapitulation of the familiar philosophy summed up in the law of complexity/consciousness. Beginning with the tendency of matter to arrange itself in more and more complex groupings (corpuscularity) and deeper and deeper layers of consciousness (emergence of the Biosphere) we reach the stage of the breakthrough of reflection or emergence of the Noosphere. The development of humanity is first divergent, but today we have reached the stage of socialisation or the beginning of convergence and the age of civilisation (replacing the age of civilisations). Such is the insight of Chardin into the million years of human history fitting the bodily and psychic development of man into the story of life and of the planet. But this exposition is incomplete. The flowering of religious life is to be elucidated in a further book “The Trinsformist Paradox” still to appear. A staggering vision, which perhaps only really strikes home to us when the author calmly says, “What does it matter provided we can assume that another million or two years will give us an understanding of the temporospatial phase of man’s evolution.” Is it true? Chardin’s own reply is: “On the .cosmic scale only the fantastic has a chance of being true.”