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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1 May 1881 - 10 Apr 1955)
French philosopher and paleontologist who regarded evolution as not just a physical fact, but also a spiritual truth.
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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes on Matter (6 quotes)
>> Click for 28 Science Quotes by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
>> Click for Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes on | Discovery | Energy | Evolution | Time | Universe | World |
>> Click for 28 Science Quotes by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
>> Click for Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes on | Discovery | Energy | Evolution | Time | Universe | World |
Human evolution is nothing else but the natural continuation, at a collective level, of the perennial and cumulative process of “psychogenetic” arrangement of matter which we call life. … The whole history of mankind has been nothing else (and henceforth it will never be anything else) but an explosive outburst of ever-growing cerebration. … Life, if fully understood, is not a freak in the universe—nor man a freak in life. On the contrary, life physically culminates in man, just as energy physically culminates in life.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1952). As quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History (1984, 1994), 246.
I never really paused for a moment to question the idea that the progressive Spiritualization of Matter—so clearly demonstrated to me by Paleontology—could be anything other, or anything less, than an irreversible process. By its gravitational nature, the Universe, I saw, was falling—falling forwards—in the direction of spirit as upon its stable form. In other words, Matter was not ultra-materialized as I would at first have believed, but was instead metamorphosed in Psyche.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In The Heart of Matter (1978), 27-28.
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 Phénomene Humain (1955).
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 Phénomene Humain (1955).
The stars are laboratories in which the evolution of matter proceeds in the direction of large molecules.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 50. Originally published in French as Le Phénomene Humain (1955).
This fundamental discovery that all bodies owe their origin to arrangements of single initial corpuscular type is the beacon that lights the history of the universe to our eyes. In its own way, matter obeyed from the beginning that great law of biology to which we shall have to recur time and time again, the law of “complexification.”
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 48. Originally published in French as Le Phénomene Humain (1955).
See also:
- 1 May - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Teilhard de Chardin's birth.
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) -- 
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