Review of Appleton-Weber's Translation of

Teilhard's Human Phenomenon is too good to be missed. It is as if his work were prematurely published, at a time when the phenomenon of 'globalization' was not clearly grasped. In fact, the first event that forged heart and mind as a global event was the Beatles. If you ask whether there was a specific moment when this event occurred? It was June 25, 1967 when England asked Brian Epstein to present the Beatles music in the My World series live satellite link-up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4p8qxGbpOk

Mind you, this was the first of its kind satellite hook-up which brought "All You Need is Love" to 400 million souls!

After the Beatles blazed the world, globalization became a fairly undeniable factoid! And for college students of today---it is a given. Not many of this generation have entertained how unbelievable all of this is to someone born in the 60s such as myself. WOW! Trippy. And behind it all there is Teilhard. Carefully decribing as a naturalist 'galaxies', 'megamolecules', protozoans, and the noosphere! I have not even finished reading the new translation---that shows you how excited I am.

There is the marvelous sculpture of man wrestling from rock his own existence like Saruman's Uruk-Hai in Tolkien's Two Towers, which greets the cover. A work by an artist, to whom Teilhard had written in a private correspondence that he wanted this to grace the cover of his book on the human phenomenon. Thanks to this wonderfully researched scholarly translation, Teilhard's wish has been realized! Further, unpublished diagrams in Teilhard's hand were included in this publication as well as an excellent black and white photograph of Teilhard in his priestly collar and scientific coat.

Teilhard conceived of a unified field theory which does not end with mere physics but aspires to account for the quantum of life and consciousness of which man is the centralizing phenomenon.
This awareness of a relativistic space-time continuum is the crowning achievement of Teilhard's synthesis. Unfortunately, Norman Denny's 1959 translation, The Phenomenon of Man, did not communicate this achievement. Teilhard discovered the principle of 'centro-complexity' which indicates the duration of a phenomenon in terms of psychic consciousness. In other words, a method of marking time in universal time-space is to consider on the one hand, the biological centration, and on the other hand to consider its complexity. It is a shortcoming of the static, Newtonian physics of time and space, that sees 'moments' in time or places in 'space' as being interchangeable pieces in a more or less homogenous puzzle. A moment of protozoan duration (whatever that means) does not equal for example this moment reading a blog. The place of the protozan duration cannot be interchanged with the 'digital space' duration that conveys this very thought!

In the relativistic scheme of things where space-time is a continuum this means that phenomenal existence is unique 'relative' to the entire phenomenon
or continuum---in any case, Teilhard clarified this view but not only in terms of physics, but also for biology and even spirituality. For example, hydrogen is ancient and simple, protozoans are terrestrial and relatively new, but ancient in terms of the protovertebrates, and even more ancient in terms of a burrowing mole working the earth today. The complexity of this mole, towers the protovertebrates and by another factor the protozoans. The Biosphere has successively complexified in each moment of duration up until this very moment, and it is complexifying still. However, this phenomenon is also centrating, hence increasing its pyscic "temperature". Trillions of neuronal links allow the human memory to conceive of songs and pictures from youth. Now billions of minds link in trillions of ways---a complexity unsurpassed in universal history! And yet, perhaps this is capable of finding a center.
That is the law that Teilhard discovered---centro-complexity, both forces result in an advance in terms of psychic action and consciousness. Advancing ineluctably to an Omega. In my opinion, it is better to remain within the discipline of Teilhard's phenomenology than to speculate concering the "time" and "place" of the advent of the Omega. The phenomenon Teilhard calls the 'noosphere' extends both in time and in space, to the first moments of the universe's birth more than 15 billion years distant to whatever the 'place' was, the field into which the creation of the material world enacted, up until the present era of globalization, and according to Teilhard's empirical extrapolation and mystical intuition beyond 'hominization' but all within the human phenomenon.

This insight, this 'fait primitif', to use Bergson's expression, is simple and unifying. Like putting many pieces of a puzzle together until 'bing' we begin to see Teilhard's fundamental intuition. To read this work requires effort, but this effort will reward the reader with a first glimpse of a scientific account of a coherent universe---which extends all the way from the most ancient electron to the linking up of the "noosphere"---a hitherto mystical expression which now seems to be gaining in concrete signification.


See the link below for a preview of Sarah Appleton-Weber's new translation of Teilhard's classic work in philosophical anthropology---The Human Phenomenon.http://books.google.com/books?id=vTi7de7vv5wC&dq=the+human+phenomenon&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=eGXzSbL2CYTCyQXnxci6DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

Science-Mysticism

"Science alone cannot discover Christ. But Christ satisfies the yearnings that are born in our hearts in the school of science. . . Science will, in all probability, be increasingly impregnated by mysticism.” The quote is Teilhard's. I found it at the following site:
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/dr-gerry-lower-pierre-teilhard-de.html

This article says a great deal of importance. The sense of the word 'Christ' is significant, because in the contemporary milieu it seems contradictory. "Christosphere" is anachronous, not in the sense of being old fashioned but in the sense of it being too new fashioned! The cognitive dissonance dissapears and all that is left is a unified vision of truth. Truth is composed of the empirical facts established by science and at the same time is radically miraculous. Traditionally, 'miracle' meant the overcoming of natural law by supernatural act (cf. Francis Cornford). Paradoxically in the present era, miracle now amounts to accepting the contemporary world as amazing and wonderful. Teilhard explodes the sense of the 'miraculous' to each molecule, duck weed, protozoan, CD player, telephone, website. He explodes the miraculous into each pore of interstellar space, and the interminable distances between atoms. This is a PARADOX. We so routinely perform miracles---consider: each Google search is a stupendous feat---that we have become numb to the amazing wonder of light and script---speech itself.

Science and religion are bifurcated. On the other hand, in the mystical perspective of Teilhard the bifurcation dissolves. Science reveals the truth in one manner, and religion speaks of the same phenomenal reality but in mystical, analogical terms. The mystic speaks of the divine while at the same time acknowledging that the divine cannot be spoken of in human language. It is spoken of 'analogically' or by way of analogy. Hence, Jesus Christ, the name, refers to the historical Nazarean, while 'Christ' refers to the global messiah. When Christ is 'light' or 'life', on must ask in precisely what sense of 'light' and 'life'. Teilhard sees the Christ as co-terminous with the entire phenomenon of the universe. Christ is 'truth'---what a strange locution! 2+2=4---true, but Jesus Christ 'true'---What can this mean?

A coherent vision is offered. It is in this spirit that Teilhard's coherency of vision springs. Professor George Dolnikowski, the finest of teachers, once said that: "All learning is one."
Teilhard agrees---all learning is one in a vast orchestration of speech, language, script, type...but learning aims at what is real---the beautiful and the true ('kaloskagathos'). To discover existence itself ---('Sat') with awareness ('cita': sanskrit') is to discover bliss ('ananda'). Sat-chit-ananda.

I must recall once more the words of esteemed professor, Ulrich Libbrecht, sinologist at K.U. Leuven: "Your everday life is the highest form of spirituality." Double wow! What a mantra. ॐ.

Another fine teacher, a Flemish metaphysician, Jan Van der Veken, professor of philosophy at the University of Leuven in Belgium once proclaimed that the sense of the miraculous is not in one solitary overcoming of natural law, but rather in the sense that the miracle is continuous with space, time, space-time and the phenomenon of man!

Excellent Introductory/Overview of Teilhard's 'Noosphere'

Cunningham's article is a good place to start:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/mar/cunning.html

Answer to Common Criticisms of Teilhard

Bruno Barnhart’s criticisms of Teilhard’s synthesis delivered at the Evolutionary Metaphysics Conference at Esalen Institute

Limitations of Teilhard's vision
“Barnhart mentioned a few of the critical questions invited by Teilhard's bold synthesis. On the grand scale of planetary evolution, many of the dynamics of human existence do not appear. The tragedies and evils of human life are hardly suggested in the great synthetic vision. The synthesis has been criticized from the theological perspective for obscuring the distinction between the supernatural and natural realms, and from the scientific side for the way in which Teilhard sometimes credited bold hypotheses with a quasi-certainty. While he often claimed to speak simply as a scientist, the reader continually feels in his thought and language the passionate momentum of prophetic faith.”
http://www.esalenctr.org/display/evo_meta_sum.cfm#tarnas

Our response to these three criticisms of Teilhard’s thought and vision:

!. “The tragedies and evils of human life are hardly suggested in the great synthetic vision.” Au contraire. In the Future of Man Teilhard specifically addresses what is perhaps the most significant “tragic” event of the XXth century, i.e. the atomic bomb, in an essay entitled “Some Reflections on the Spiritual Repercussions of the Atom Bomb.” Teilhard considers this event in the deserts of Arizona in 1945 in two aspects: 1)its terror and 2)its revelation of human power on the global scale. Furthermore he often spoke of the growing tension and heat of the world owing to overpopulation as initiating crises which must be averted, in order that the Noosphere could emerge. The same forces which promote crisis also “fuel” noogenesis.

2.“The synthesis has been criticized from the theological perspective for obscuring the distinction between the supernatural and natural realms…” This is merely a linguistic problem. One could make the same criticism of Aquinas’ appropriation of Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics in his synthesis. The problem is as follows: whenever a visionary or mystic grasps reality the primary fact and phenomenon is the vision of grasp and not the words which later fill in to describe this event. Hence, Teilhard grasps that at the core of all matter and living being there is a center and he attaches the name Omega and Christ to this. Likewise, Newton first of all grasped the truth of the experience of ‘gravity” and only later named the phenomenon as ‘gravitation’. In the initial grasping either of Thomas Aquinas, Newton or Teilhard, language is secondary and peripheral at best. What is grasped is the unitary experience of truth and reality, not words! It is critics and historians who divide the unitary experience of true phenomena into distinctions such as ‘supernatural’ and ‘natural’ realms which are arbitrary linguistic conventions. What is stupendous is Newton’s discovery, not the name he gives to this discovery and the same follows for Aquinas and Teilhard. Furthermore at the level of authentic research and vision, a material phenomenon may be simultaneously ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ depending on the types of theories used to account for it, after the fact.

3.“…and from the scientific side for the way in which Teilhard sometimes credited bold hypotheses with a quasi-certainty. While he often claimed to speak simply as a scientist, the reader continually feels in his thought and language the passionate momentum of prophetic faith.” This is merely a criticism of style. Should scientific theory be limited only to scholars and thinkers who are devoid of passion and faith? Of course not! This is a modern prejudice. It is an example of an ad hominem fallacy.

Criticism of Teilhard’s vision is stereotypical and has appeared in many places, many times. Rarer is the individual who possesses an authentic and integral grasp of Teilhard’s vision.

Serious criticism of Teilhard’s thought would rather look like this:
1.At what point do we know empirically speaking that globalization has emerged?
2.What is thinking?
3.What is matter?

These are questions that are not adequately met in contemporary scientific theory, and even though there are many theories, there is no agreement as to what constitutes the reality of these phenomena (“thought,” “matter,” “globalization” are merely words attempting to describe phenomenal truths and realities---it is these truths that science should seek, not merely words and theories based upon these words).

Thinking together with Teilhard when we have grasped his vision, only then can the authentic criticism begin. At the end of the day the question of what words such as ‘noogenesis’ or ‘globalization’ mean is slightly different than the attempt to grasp and express the original insight from which this language has sprung. When we put aside the academic bickering, we must attempt to face this insight or fait primitif to use Bergson’s expression. The effort is to understand Teilhard, not criticize the man or his theories.

Hence the question emerges: Is there anything on the horizon in the present age for which contemporary theories of physics and neuroscience lack an ability to articulate meaning but which Teilhard’s synthesis adequately grasps and explains with meaning? If this is the case then Teilhard’s synthesis at least has the credential of offering a paradigm of scientific explanation which is otherwise absent. And in the sense of Kuhn, such a theory which is adequate to this task is at the very least a “true” paradigm.

Take for example the phenomenon of ‘globalization’. The apostrophe indicates that we are talking about the truth of the phenomenon which people call “globalization”. We are not asserting that there is such a thing as ‘globalization’ but merely indicating that more and more people are using a term to describe a felt phenomenon. As such we concerned with the truth of that which gives rise to the expression ‘globalization’.

Certainly there are many competing accounts of globalization: in foreign affairs, in business, in terms of environmental crisis and then there is also Teilhard’s use of the term which predates nearly all others. The correct angle for this question is as follows: are the phenomena being called ‘globalization’ adequate to Teilhard’s sense of the term? This is a question of legitimacy.

Business leaders are often not concerned with questions of legitimacy in the sense that a social scientist, or philosopher may be. Hence, IBM is pioneering a globalized business strategy which proceeds without reference to either social science or Teilhard’s thought. Business often enacts events and realities in a poetic sense, whereas science attempts to describe and mirror what is. Hence there will always be a disconnect between business and science. Business motors world progress and science then attempts to explain this reality. Examples in medicine abound---the artificial heart, to name one, where businesses have decided to go ahead with a transforming procedure, certainly based upon scientific knowledge, but in the fact that it moves forward, it transcends merely scientific knowledge. This is to put it in Nietzsche’s phrase an example of the will to power. Business hence fulfills human aspiration contrary to science and fact.

The role of a seer such as Teilhard or loosely speaking the role of a prophet is different. In his lifetime, Teilhard stood nearly alone in his vision and grasp of the truth of human life. In fact there was extremely little evidence that could confirm his vision. And yet, what we have seen since his death in 1955 is that things have more and more confirmed Teilhard’s unique vision. Especially the internet (whatever that means :)).

Webmaster for the Vatican: Sister Judith Zoebelein

http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1363/meet-the-techie-sister.htm

Teilhard with Chico