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  • The Evolutionary Vision of Teilhard de Chardin
  • T. A. Goudge (bio)
T. A. Goudge

Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto; author of The Thought of C. S. Pierce (1950) and The Ascent of Life (1961)

notes

1. P. Teilhard de Chardin, Oeuvres, 5 vols. (Paris; Editions du Seuil, 1955–7).

2. P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harpers, 1959), 228, 218.

3. Ibid., 58.

4. Ibid., 64.

5. Ibid., 78.

6. P. W. Medawar in Mind, N.S., LXX (1961), 101.

7. The Phenomenon of Man, 188.

8. Ibid., 89.

9. Ibid., 301, 268.

10. Ibid., 146.

11. Cf. “But to-day, after so many eons of hominization, the great accomplishment pursued by life since its first emergence on earth two or three billion years ago is over.” P. Teilhard de Chardin, “The Antiquity and World-Expansion of Human Culture,” in Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, ed. W. L. Thomas, Jr. (Chicago, 1956), 106; “The universe arranges itself in a single, grand series…on the whole clearly oriented in an upward direction, from the most simple atom to the highest living organisms” Etudes, CCXLIX (May, 1946), 154. (Quoted in C. Tresmontant, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.: His Thought [Baltimore, 1959], 26.)

12. The Phenomenon of Man, 223.

13. Ibid., 181–2.

14. “The Antiquity and World-Expansion of Human Culture,” 109. Cf. The Phenomenon of Man, 276: “Mankind is so young that it could almost be called newborn.”

15. “The Antiquity and World-Expansion of Human Culture,” 110.

16. The Phenomenon of Man, 259.

17. Ibid., 273.

18. Ibid., 269, 291.

19. Ibid., 371.

20. Ibid., 264.

21. G. G. Simpson in The Scientific American, 202 (April, 1960), 204.

22. The Phenomenon of Man, 29.

23. Ibid., 30.

24. Commentors who seek to cushion the impact of Teilhard’s ideas on traditional metaphysics are fond of stressing the “purely scientific” character of his investigations. Tresmontant, for example, insists that Teilhard “is engaged in a strictly scientific enterprise,” limited to the plane of appearances. Yet he also remarks that “Teilhard’s entire scientific work can be characterized as an effort to read the direction of evolution in reality itself… in order to elucidate its immanent intentionality.” If this is not metaphysics, nothing is. (See Tresmontant, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.: His Thought, 16, 21.)

25. The Phenomenon of Man, 248.

26. Ibid., 53.

27. Ibid., 79–80.

28. Ibid., 272.

29. Ibid., 49.

30. Claude Cuénot, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Les grandes étapes de son évolution (Paris, 1958). 291. Cf. P. B. Grenet, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Paris, 1960).

31. The Phenomenon of Man, 35.

32. “Vie et Planètes: Que se passe-t-il en ce moment sur la Terre?,” Etudes, CCXLIX (May, 1946), 157. (Quoted in Tresmontant, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 27–8.)

33. Cf. “The Antiquity and World-Expansion of Human Culture,” 107–10; and for a discussion, T. A. Goudge, The Ascent of Life: A Philosophical Study of the Theory of Evolution (London, Toronto, 1961), 143–8.

34. In a letter of May 18, 1954, quoted by Cuénot (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 448–9).

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