Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Marie-Joseph Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

(biographical notice raised from readings :

• Claude Cuenot, Teilhard de Chardin, Editions du Rocher,
• Edith de la Heronnière, Teilhard de Chardin, Editions Pygmalion)

Beginings

1881 Birth at Sarcenat Castle

Marie-Joseph Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born on May 1, 1881 close to Clermont Ferrand (France). He was the fourth child of a large family. His father, naturalist as a hobby, collected stones, insects and plants. He waked up at his place the direction of the observation of nature. His spiritual life was awakened by his mother. Once 11 years old, he went to the Jesuit college of Mongré, in Villefranche-sur-Saone, until the baccalaureates of philosophy and mathematics. Then, 1899, he entered the Jesuit noviciate of Aix en Provence then began a philosophical, theological and spiritual cursus, which will be led to religious wishes in 1918.

1901 Jesuit Student In Jersey

As of the summer 1901, the Waldeck-Rousseau laws which submitted congregational associations properties to a state control, forced the Jesuits into exile. Then, they opened their houses in England. The young Jesuit students had to continue their studies in Jersey. In the meanwhile, Teilhard achieved in 1902 a licentiate of literature in Caen (France).

1905 Teacher (i.e. (Regent in Jesuit vocabulary) of physics and chemistry in Cairo (Egypt)

From 1905 to [[1908], he taught physics and chemistry in Cairo, at the Jesuit college of the Holy Family. In Egypt. He wrote " it is the dazzling of the East foreseen and drunk greedily... in its lights, its vegetation, its fauna and its deserts". (Letters from Egypt (1905-1908) - Editions Aubier )

1908 Theology in Hastings. The Theory of evolution

Teilhard studied theology in Hastings, in Sussex (United Kingdom), from 1908 to 1912. There, he made the synthesis of his scientific, philosophical and theological knowledge in the light of Evolution. The reading of "l'Evolution Créatrice" (the creative Evolution) of Henri Bergson was, he said , the "catalyst of a fire which devoured already its heart and its spirit". He is ordained priest on August 24, 1911, aged 30.

1912 With the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle (Natural history museum) with Marcellin Boulle. The human paleontology

From 1912 to 1914, he worked at the laboratory of paleontology of the National Musée d'Histoire Naturelle , in Paris (France), on the mammals of the middle Tertiary sector and inferior in Europe. Professor Marcellin Boule, specialist in the neanderthalian, gradually forms him in the search of human paleontology. At the Institute of human paleontology, he became a friend with Henri Breuil and took part with him, in 1913, with excavations in the prehistoric painted caves of the North-West of Spain.Cave of Castillo

1914-1919 Stretcher-bearer at the 1st World War. Genesis of a thought

Mobilized in December [[1914)), it will make the war as stretcher-bearer in the 8th regiment of Moroccan riflesmen. He will obtain for his control several mentions, the Medaille Mitlitaire and the Legion of Honor.

Throughout these years of war he developed his reflexions in his diaries and letters to his cousin, Marguerite Teillard-Chambon, who will join together them in a book: Genèse d'une pensée (Genesis of a thought). (See below : Women). He will make this confidence later: "the war was a meeting...with the Absolute". In 1916, he writes his first essay: La Vie Cosmique (Cosmic life) where his scientific and philosophical thought is revealed just as his mystical life. He pronounces his solemn wishes to be a Jesuit in Sainte Foy-the-Lyon, on May 26, 1918, during a permission. In August 1919, in Jersey, he will write Puissance spirituelle de la Matière (the spiritual Power of the Matter), the whole essays being written between 1916 and 1919 are published under the following titles:

• "Ecrits du temps de la Guerre" (Written in time of the War) (TXII of complete Works) - Editions du Seuil
• Genèse d'une pensée (letters of 1914 to 1918) - Editions Grasset -

1920-1926 Studies and activities of teaching

Teilhard followed to the Sorbonne three unit degrees of natural science: geology, botany and zoology. His thesis will relate to the Mammals of the French lower Eocene and their layers . Since [[1920], he gave a lecturer in geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris, (France) then assistant professor after having be granted with the science Doctorate in 1922.

In 1923 he discovered China with Father Emile Licent, who was in charge in Tien Tsin for a significant laboratory collaborating with the Natural history museum in Paris and the Marcellin Boule's laboratory. Licent carried out a considerable basic work in connection with missionaries who accumulated the observations of a scientific nature at their spare time.

Teilhard wrote several essays of which La Messe sur le Monde (the " Mass on the World"), in the desert of Ordos. He took again the following year his lectures at the Catholic Institute and a cycle of conferences for the students of the Engineers Schools. Two theological essays on "original sin" sent to a theologian, on his request, on a purely personal basis, is wrongly understood.

• July 1920 : Chute, Rédemption et Géocentrie (Fall, Redemption and Geocentry)
• Spring 1922 : Notes sur quelques représentations historiques possibles du Péché originel (Notes on few possible historical representations of the original sin) (Works, Tome X)
  

The Company required him to give up his lectures at the Catholic Institute and to continue his geological research in China. (See below : Modernist Crisis and prosecution from the Congregation for the Doctrines of the Faith)

Exile in China and international scientific career

1926-1946 Exile in China

A geological map of China

Teilhard thus settled out again in China in April 1926. He would remain there more or less twenty years, with many voyages throughout the world. He settled until 1932 in Tientsin with Emile Licent then in Peking. From 1926 to 1935, Teilhard made five geological searches in China. They enable him to establish a first general geological map of China.

In 1926-1927 after a missed campaign in Kansou he travelled in the Sang-Kan-Ho valley near to Kalgan and made a tour in Eastern Mongolia. He wrote Le Milieu Divin (the divine Medium (???? ).

1929 Advisor to Chinese national geological Service

Teilhard prepares the first pages of his main work: Le Phénomène humain (The human Phenomenon).

As an Advisor to the Chinese national geological Service, he supervised the geology and the paleontology of the excavations of Choukoutien (Zhoukoudian) near Peking. In December 1929 he took part in the discovery of the Sinanthrope. Residence in Mandchouria with Emile Licent. Stay in Western Shansi and septentrional Shensi with the Chinese paleontologist C.C.Young.

1930 Center-Asia Forwarding of American Museum of Natural History

After a tour in Mandchourie in the area of Great Khingan with Chinese geologists, he belongs to the team of American Expedition Center-Asia in Gobi organized in June and July, by American Museum of Natural History with Roy Chapman Andrews.

1931 the Man of Peking

HenriBreuil and Teilhard discovered that Sinanthrope de Choukoutien (Zhoukoudian), also called the Man of Peking , nearest relative of Pithecanthrop from Java, is "faber" (work of the stones and control of fire). He wrote L'Esprit de la Terre (the Spirit of the Earth) .He is 50

1931-1932 Citroën yellow Cruising

Teilhard took part as a scientist in famous "yellow cruising" Haardt-Citroën in Central Asia. He joined in the North-West of Peking in Kalgan the China group who must join the second part of the team, the Pamir group, in Aksou. With his colleagues they will be retained several months in Ouroumtsi, headtown of Sinkiang. The following year began the Sino-Japanese war.

Teilhard undertook several explorations in the south of China. Travels in the valleys of Yangtsé and with Szechuan in 1934 then, the following year, in Kwang-If and Kwang-Tong. The relationship with Marcellin Boule are disrupted ; the Museum cut the financements on the basis Theilhard worked more for the Chinese Geological Service than for the Museum.

During all these years, infatiguable traveller, Teilhard strongly contributed to the constitution of an international network of research in human Paleontology relating systematically to all the Eastern and south Eastern zone of the Asian continent. It will be particularly constant in this task by two Anglo-Saxon friends, the English Canadian Davidson Black and the Scot George B. Barbour. Many times he will remain or make stays in France and in the [[United States], these countries being left to go in other expeditions.

1927-1928: stay in France in Paris as a base. Journeys to Leuwen (Belgium), in Cantal, in Ariège (France). Between a lot of articles in reviews, he met new people such as Paul Valery, Bruno de Solages who will help him in the issues with the Roman Catholic Church.

Since 1925, Tchang Kaï Check has succeeded to Sun Yat Sen as the leader of the Guomingtang. Since 1926, he began operations to reconquer the north. The young allied Mao Tse Tong began to be rather awkward. So, in 1927, Tchang orders the murder of the communist trade unions men in Shanghai. Teilhard's travel letters echoe these evenments.

1928 In Ethiopia with Henry de Monfreid

1928-1929: Answering to a 1 year old invitation Henry de Monfreid, a two months long travel in Obock in Harrar and in Somalia with his colleague Pierre Lamarre, geologist, before taking the boat in Djibouti to come back Tientsin.

"Monfreid and me did not have anything any more European", joked Teilhard. Once dropped the anchor, at night, along the basaltic cliffs where grew the incense. The men were going by dugout to fish odd fishes within the corals. One day, Hissas sold us a kid goat with milk of camel. The crew took this opportunity "to devote" the ship. The old reheated negro who served Monfreid in his whole adventures dyed with blood the rudder, the mast, the front part of the ship, then, later in the night, it was the song of Q'ran in the medium of a thick incense smoke "(DEC 28, 1928)

(to be continued)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher involved in coining the concept of the noosphere, and present at the discovery of Peking Man.

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.'

from The Heart of Matter (1950)