The Appearance of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Author:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: evolution, planetization, noogenesis, hominization, omega point, convergence, totalization, teilhard de chardin, noosphere

Kg. 15. Hypothetical development of an axial zone c of maximum cerebration at the centre of a rising and divergent bundle of living forms

rr. Critical surface of 'reflexion* crossed at h by the human strand

(phylum) Divergent at the base, above the point of emergence, the ray then converges on

itself (cf. fig. 1) a, b, c three phases in the development

isms that we act throughout our ordinary life ? And is it not this interplay that lets us hope to attach to the ' genetic quantum of mutation' the long scale of values required by the strongly hierarchic differentiation of the Biosphere—and more especially by the great leap of hominisation ?

As we have just seen an orthogenesis reaches its highest point among the anthropoids which is not simply the micro-genesis of a particular phylum (horses, elephants...), but coincides with the mega-orthogenesis of the whole Biosphere (principal axis of cerebration).

In these circumstances does it not become comprehensible that a slight variation of a neuro-cerebral order might have been able to start the explosion, the combustion that we observe as having taken place on earth in the course of the Pliocene ? One zoological fibre (the human fibre) alone (as a result of a privileged and long prepared position) succeeds in piercin^r^-^McaLsiir face separating the sim gle^ psyc fiic from the refie jHy£Lpsy4i^z&& all the pressure of life pours through the breach at last effected into a new realm.

Could not this be the secret of the phenomenon of man?

THE APPEARANCE OF MAN

d Conclusion: Congenital characteristics of the human phylum

If the preceding considerations have any value (that is to say if it is true that humanity represents a bursting of life into the reflective zone, as the result of a coincidence between chromosomic mutation and cerebral orthogenesis) then the human group, studied in its ' blank of birth \ appears as if endowed by its original structure with the following three major properties:

a First, issuing from the biosphere by way of normal specia-tion, it proclaims itself a true phylum —within which we must expect to find the general characteristics of every phylum: phyletic dispersion and ramification in particular.

h But at the same time, and to the extent that it develops without competitors in a biologically new space, completely free (realm of reflective life—or life of second sort) the phylum has a natural tendency, not only to become the leading shoot on the summit of the tree of life, but also to spread widely as a sheet over the entire planet.

c This by the unfolding of certain inner possibilities (simply those of reflexion) which cannot fail to endow it, after a certain given moment, with a quite particular mode of behaviour. 1

It is exactly this that a more searching examination of what I have called the stem and the inflorescence of the human zoological group is about to reveal to us in successive stages.

1 Convergence (as we shall see) of the phylum on itself; and simultaneous appearance of the forces of self-evolution.

THE PHYLETIC STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN GROUP

II.

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