Evolution: The Theory of Teilhard de Chardin by Bernard Delfgaauw (review)

794 BOOK REVIEWS Evolution: The Theory of Teilhard de Chardin. By BERNARD DELFGAAUW. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. Pp. 124. $4.00. The audience to whom this book is addressed, specifically, "those who mean to read The Phenomenon of Man-or who have already done so," but who have not had " any training in either philosophy or the natural sciences " (p. 20) , rather clearly delimits the sort of criticisms a reviewer may make without laying himself open to the charge of attacking an author for not doing what the author in question never intended to do. Accordingly, I will limit my remarks to the only two questions applicable to a book of this kind: a) is it "written down " adequately to be "adapted to the sort of knowledge that anyone would get from the average run of secondary education" (p. 20); and b) does it achieve this order of simplification without oversimplification, that is, does it omit without distorting, and delineate without caricaturing (abstractio non est mendacium ). In my judgment, the book probably could be read with understanding by an interested high-school graduate. I do think that the author has pretty well proportioned his material to the capacities of the audience he had in mind. Whether he achieves this simplification without oversimplifying is another question again. This type of popularization is not easy to achieve, and on the whole I don't think Professor Delfgaauw has done too badly. His location of the position taken by Teilhard in terms of two basic notions (that life is the specific effect of organized matter, and that man represents a new kind of animal life) is accurate as far as it goes, though Teilhard himself adds a third proposition-that human socialization is an organic phenomenon-in his own summary of the " essence " of his intellectual position (see the "Summing Up or Postscript" to The Phenomenon of Man, pp. 299-308, esp. pp. 303-306). Similarly, his setting out under eight headings of " the most striking features of Teilhard's synthesis " (I, that the appraisal of a world known to be in evolution requires " a new methodology ... in between that of experimental science ... and of philosophy "-p. 36; II, that "evolution embraces the whole of reality "-p. 38; III, that there is some manner of discontinuity within the continuity of evolution-p. 40; IV, that evolution as the rise of consciousness equals progress-p. 42; V, that there is reason to expect a successful continuance of evolution through man-p. 43; VI, that evolution " has the character of a call on human freedom " as " the foundation of ethics "-p. 45; VII, that evolution in man must move toward increased interdependence, achievement, and so" towards unity "-p. 47; and finally, VIII, the Christian faith endorses and reinforces man's role as the "leading shoot" of cosmic evolution-p. 49) is not a bad summary of the main features in Teilhard's view. BOOK REVIEWS 795 On the other hand, the non-specialist reader deserves better than the impression that with Teilhard we have something utterly novel, which contrasts vividly with "the final bankruptcy of traditional modes of thinking about the world, all of which have looked on it as something essentially static" (from Bernard Towers' "Introduction," p. 11). If Towers is right in regarding Teilhard's "greatest single contribution to science" as ''his 'Law of Complexity-Consciousness'" (p. 11), or, as Delfgaauw himself puts it, if " what Teilhard's fundamental insight is" comes down to regarding " life as a higher stage of material organization and consciousness as a higher stage of life" (pp. 48-49) -and I agree that these formulations do capture Teilhard's essential conviction-then Teilhard's doctrine is as revolutionary and anti-traditional as Aristotle's definition of the soul (see " The Philosophical Dimensions of the Origin of Species," Part II, in the April, 1969, The Thomist, esp. pp. 318-326, 319 fn. 264, and 335) . The non-specialist deserves better, too, than to be told that objections to the Teilhardian vision, whether "in writings markedly unfavorable to Teilhard's thinking" or" on the part of authors who sympathize with and admire Teilhard," spring in every instance " from...