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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index D > Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1 May 1881 - 10 Apr 1955)

French philosopher and paleontologist.

Science Quotes by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (12 quotes)

And now, as a germination of planetary dimensions, comes the thinking layer which over its full extent develops and intertwines its fibres, not to confuse and neutralise them but to reinforce them in the living unity of a single tissue.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 244. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Develop (2)  |  Extent (10)  |  Fibre (5)  |  Full (5)  |  Germination (2)  |  Layer (8)  |  Living (15)  |  Single (18)  |  Thinking (140)  |  Tissue (13)  |  Unity (14)

Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforth if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow. ... The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself....Man is not the center of the universe as once we thought in our simplicity, but something much more wonderful�the arrow pointing the way to the final unification of the world in terms of life. Man alone constitutes the last-born, the freshest, the most complicated, the most subtle of all the successive layers of life. ... The universe has always been in motion and at this moment continues to be in motion. But will it still be in motion tomorrow? ... What makes the world in which we live specifically modern is our discovery in it and around it of evolution. ... Thus in all probability, between our modern earth and the ultimate earth, there stretches an immense period, characterized not by a slowing-down but a speeding up and by the definitive florescence of the forces of evolution along the line of the human shoot.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In The Phenomenon of Man (1975), pp 218, 220, 223, 227, 228, 277.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrow (6)  |  Bow (3)  |  Center (4)  |  Characterize (3)  |  Complicated (13)  |  Condition (53)  |  Consciousness (31)  |  Constitute (3)  |  Curve (6)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Earth (210)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Fact (277)  |  Final (10)  |  Follow (13)  |  General (9)  |  Human (131)  |  Hypothesis (145)  |  Illuminating (2)  |  Immense (4)  |  Layer (8)  |  Life (379)  |  Light (99)  |  Line (15)  |  Live (8)  |  Looking (14)  |  Modern (31)  |  Moment (19)  |  Motion (58)  |  Period (18)  |  Pointing (2)  |  Probability (53)  |  Reflecting (2)  |  Satisfy (5)  |  Shoot (3)  |  Simplicity (81)  |  Subtle (6)  |  Successive (2)  |  System (57)  |  Term (29)  |  Theory (319)  |  Thought (143)  |  Tomorrow (10)  |  True (14)  |  Ultimate (25)  |  Unification (5)  |  Universe (249)  |  Wonderful (6)  |  World (165)

Let us keep the discoveries and indisputable measurements of physics. But ... A more complete study of the movements of the world will oblige us, little by little, to turn it upside down; in other words, to discover that if things hold and hold together, it is only by reason of complexity, from above.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 43. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Complete (9)  |  Complexity (42)  |  Discover (7)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Hold (12)  |  Indisputable (3)  |  Keep (5)  |  Little (16)  |  Measurement (102)  |  Movement (29)  |  Physics (142)  |  Reason (146)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Study (117)  |  Together (7)  |  Turn (16)  |  Upside-Down (2)  |  Word (89)  |  World (165)

Psychogenesis has led to man. Now it effaces itself, relieved or absorbed by another and a higher function�the engendering and subsequent development of the mind, in one word noogenesis. When for the first time in a living creature instinct perceived itself in its own mirror, the whole world took a pace forward.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 181. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Creature (43)  |  Development (97)  |  Engendering (2)  |  First (28)  |  Forward (7)  |  Function (34)  |  Higher (14)  |  Instinct (21)  |  Living (15)  |  Mind (236)  |  Mirror (9)  |  Subsequent (5)  |  Time (129)  |  Whole (31)  |  Word (89)  |  World (165)

Scientists [still] refuse to consider man as an object of scientific scrutiny except through his body. The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe�even a positivist one�remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 36. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (2)  |  Body (78)  |  Coherent (3)  |  Consider (5)  |  Cover (8)  |  Interior (5)  |  Interpretation (34)  |  Matter (122)  |  Mind (236)  |  Object (38)  |  Physics (142)  |  Picture (16)  |  Refuse (3)  |  Remain (11)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Scientific (22)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Scrutiny (4)  |  Time (129)  |  True (14)  |  Universe (249)  |  World (165)

The more we split and pulverise matter artificially, the more insistently it proclaims its fundamental unity.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 41. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Fundamental (46)  |  Matter (122)  |  Proclaim (3)  |  Split (3)  |  Unity (14)

To write the true natural history of the world, we should need to be able to follow it from within. It would thus appear no longer as an interlocking succession of structural types replacing one another, but as an ascension of inner sap spreading out in a forest of consolidated instincts. Right at its base, the living world is constituted by conscious clothes in flesh and bone.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 151. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (3)  |  Ascension (2)  |  Base (9)  |  Bone (24)  |  Clothes (3)  |  Conscious (2)  |  Flesh (9)  |  Follow (13)  |  Forest (37)  |  Inner (7)  |  Instinct (21)  |  Living (15)  |  Natural History (15)  |  Need (32)  |  Sap (2)  |  Spreading (3)  |  Succession (26)  |  True (14)  |  Type (13)  |  World (165)  |  Write (15)

We may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In The Divine Milieu (1927, 1968), 62.
Science quotes on:  |  Continue (2)  |  Creation (115)  |  Highest (4)  |  Imagine (5)  |  Level (14)  |  Long (13)  |  World (165)  |  Wrong (32)

We only have to look around us to see how complexity ... and psychic �temperature� are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a directionally controlled transformation of the Noosphere �as a whole.�
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Ren� Hague (trans.), The Heart of Matter (1950, 1978), 38. His term Noosphere refers to the collective sphere of human consciousness.
Science quotes on:  |  Complexity (42)  |  Familiar (4)  |  Indication (14)  |  Individual (45)  |  Objective (15)  |  Planet (69)  |  Psychic (2)  |  Reality (57)  |  Recognize (6)  |  Rising (2)  |  Scale (16)  |  See (23)  |  Temperature (19)  |  Transformation (23)  |  Whole (31)

We see not only thought as participating in evolution as an anomaly or as an epiphenomenon; but evolution as so reducible to and identifiable with a progress towards thought that the movement of our souls expresses and measures the very stages of progress of evolution itself. Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 221. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Anomaly (5)  |  Become (7)  |  Conscious (2)  |  Discover (7)  |  Epiphenomenon (2)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Express (6)  |  Measure (6)  |  Movement (29)  |  Nothing (64)  |  Progress (180)  |  See (23)  |  Stage (11)  |  Thought (143)

Without the slightest doubt there is something through which material and spiritual energy hold togehter and are complementary. In the last analysis, somehow or other, there must be a single energy operating in the world. And the first idea that occurs to us is that the 'soul' must be as it were the focal point of transformation at which, from all the points of nature, the forces of bodies converge, to become interiorised and sublimated in beauty and truth.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 63. Originally published in French as Le Ph�nomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (70)  |  Beauty (71)  |  Become (7)  |  Body (78)  |  Complementary (2)  |  Converge (2)  |  Doubt (56)  |  Energy (89)  |  First (28)  |  Force (60)  |  Hold (12)  |  Idea (180)  |  Material (47)  |  Nature (475)  |  Occur (3)  |  Operating (2)  |  Point (22)  |  Single (18)  |  Slightest (2)  |  Soul (46)  |  Spiritual (9)  |  Together (7)  |  Transformation (23)  |  Truth (399)  |  World (165)

Your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Hymn of the Universe (1969), 22.
Science quotes on:  |  Creature (43)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Part (42)  |  Process (79)  |  Shoot (3)  |  Stem (5)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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