Teilhard de Chardin in China
Père Teilhard de Chardin spent nearly twenty years of his adult life living and working in China. He conducted path-breaking research at the "Peking Man" site of Zhoukoudian; the Nihewan Basin of Hebei, where recent archeological excavations have brought to light the oldest welll-dated Paleolithic assemblages known outside of Africa; and the late Pleistocene site of Sjara-osso-gol (Salawusu) in Inner Mongolia, known for remains of the earliest modern humans in Asia.
Teilhard's Philosophy
Teilhard's philosophy of "neo-humanism," which unites a scientific appreciation of the reality of evolution as a compelling force of nature (i.e. cosmogenesis) with a metaphysical understanding of the human condition, has profound meaning for all those concerned with the future of humanity as we enter the 21st century. As stated by Sir Juilian Huxley, founder of the modern evolutionary synthesis, "Teilhard...effected a threefold synthesis-- of the material and physical world with the world of the mind and spirit; of the past with the future; and of variety with unity, the many with the one...". Teilhard's vision was truly ahead of his time and is becoming more relevant with each passing day. The progressive optimism of his message regarding the future mental and spiritual evolution of humankind is a necessary palliative to the cynicism, parochialism and know-nothingism so rampant within modern society.
Find out more about Teilhard de Chardin (and other Jesuits who ventured to China) at the following links:
- A Teilhard de Chardin homepage
- Links to a growing network of sites constructed by Teilhard's philosophical disciples.
- "The Human Phenomenon"
- Quotes from Teilhard's magnum opus the "Human Phenomenon"
- Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain
- Article outlining aspects of Teilhard's philosophy, its continuing and increasing relevancy and influence among today's Internet gurus.
- The Phenomenon of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Compelling article on Teilhard's evolutionism and his struggle to place humankind within rather than apart from nature.
Jesuits in China
- Overview of early Jesuit missionaries to Ming dynasty China and the profound effect they had on the Ming court by introducing Renaissance scholarship to China.
"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, S.J. The Human Phenomenon, 1955
"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 transformation of the planet 'as a whole.'"
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. The Heart of Matter, 1950
Back to Home Page