Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (French: [pjɛʁ tɛjaʁ də ʃaʁdɛ̃] ; 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, philosopher, mystic and teacher. He investigated the theory of evolution from a perspective influenced by Henri Bergson and Christian mysticism, writing scientific and religious works on the subject. His mainstream scientific achievements include his paleontological research in China, taking part in the discovery of the significant Peking Man fossils from the Zhoukoudian cave complex, near Beijing.
His more speculative ideas, sometimes criticized as pseudoscientific, have included a vitalist conception of the Omega Point. Along with Vladimir Vernadsky, he contributed to the development of the concept of the noosphere. In 1962, the Holy Office issued a warning regarding Teilhard's works, alleging ambiguities and doctrinal errors without specifying them. Some eminent Catholic figures, including Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, have made positive comments on some of his ideas since. The response to his writings by scientists has been divided. He received several citations, and was awarded the Médaille militaire and the Legion of Honour, the highest French order of merit, both military and civil.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in the Château of Sarcenat, Orcines, about 2.5 miles north-west of Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, French Third Republic, on 1 May 1881, as the fourth of eleven children of librarian Emmanuel Teilhard de Chardin (1844–1932) and Berthe-Adèle, née de Dompierre d'Hornoys of Picardy. His mother was a great-grandniece of the philosopher Voltaire. He inherited the double surname from his father, who was descended on the Teilhard side from an ancient family of magistrates from Auvergne originating in Murat, Cantal, ennobled under Louis XVIII.
His father, a graduate of the École Nationale des Chartes, served as a regional librarian and was a keen naturalist with a strong interest in natural science. He collected rocks, insects and plants and encouraged nature studies in the family. Pierre Teilhard's spirituality was awakened by his mother. When he was twelve, he went to the Jesuit college of Mongré in Villefranche-sur-Saône, where he completed the Baccalauréat in philosophy and mathematics. In 1899, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Aix-en-Provence. In October 1900, he began his junior studies at the Collégiale Saint-Michel de Laval. On 25 March 1901, he made his first vows. In 1902, Teilhard completed a licentiate in literature at the University of Caen.
In 1901 and 1902, due to an anti-clerical movement in the French Republic, the government banned the Jesuits and other religious orders from France. This forced the Jesuits to go into exile on the island of Jersey in the United Kingdom. While there, his brother and sister in France died of illnesses and another sister was incapacitated by illness. The unexpected losses of his siblings at young ages caused Teilhard to plan to discontinue his Jesuit studies in science, and change to studying theology. He wrote that he changed his mind after his Jesuit novice master encouraged him to follow science as a legitimate way to God. Due to his strength in science subjects, he was despatched to teach physics and chemistry at the Collège de la Sainte Famille in Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt from 1905 until 1908. From there he wrote in a letter: "[I]t is the dazzling of the East foreseen and drunk greedily ... in its lights, its vegetation, its fauna and its deserts."
For the next four years he was a Scholastic at Ore Place in Hastings, East Sussex where he acquired his theological formation. There he synthesized his scientific, philosophical and theological knowledge in the light of evolution. At that time he read Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson, about which he wrote that "the only effect that brilliant book had upon me was to provide fuel at just the right moment, and very briefly, for a fire that was already consuming my heart and mind." Bergson was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. His ideas were influential on Teilhard's views on matter, life, and energy. On 24 August 1911, aged 30, Teilhard was ordained a priest.
In the ensuing years, Bergson's protege, the mathematician and philosopher Édouard Le Roy, was appointed successor to Bergson at the College de France. In 1921, Le Roy and Teilhard became friends and met weekly for long discussions. Teilhard wrote: "I loved him like a father, and owed him a very great debt . . . he gave me confidence, enlarged my mind, and served as a spokesman for my ideas, then taking shape, on 'hominization' and the 'noosphere.'" Le Roy later wrote in one of his books: "I have so often and for so long talked over with Pierre Teilhard the views expressed here that neither of us can any longer pick out his own contribution."
Academic and scientific career
His father's strong interest in natural science and geology instilled the same in Teilhard from an early age, and would continue throughout his lifetime. As a child, Teilhard was intensely interested in the stones and rocks on his family's land and the neighboring regions. His father helped him develop his skills of observation. At the University of Paris, he studied geology, botany and zoology. After the French government banned all religious orders from France and the Jesuits were exiled to the island of Jersey in the UK, Teilhard deepened his geology knowledge by studying the rocks and landscape of the island.
In 1920, he became a lecturer in geology at the Catholic University of Paris, and later a professor. He earned his doctorate in 1922. In 1923 he was hired to do geological research on expeditions in China by the Jesuit scientist and priest Emile Licent. In 1914, Licent with the sponsorship of the Jesuits founded one of the first museums in China and the first museum of natural science: the Musée Hoangho Paiho. In its first eight years, the museum was housed in the Chongde Hall of the Jesuits. In 1922, with the support of the Catholic Church and the French Concession, Licent built a special building for the museum on the land adjacent to the Tsin Ku University, which was founded by the Jesuits in China.
With help from Teilhard and others, Licent collected over 200,000 paleontology, animal, plant, ancient human, and rock specimens for the museum, which still make up more than half of its 380,000 specimens. Many of the publications and writings of the museum and its related institute were included in the world's database of zoological, botanical, and paleontological literature, which is still an important basis for examining the early scientific records of the various disciplines of biology in northern China.
Teilhard and Licent were the first to discover and examine the Shuidonggou (水洞沟) (Ordos Upland, Inner Mongolia) archaeological site in northern China. Recent analysis of flaked stone artifacts from the most recent (1980) excavation at this site has identified an assemblage which constitutes the southernmost occurrence of an Initial Upper Paleolithic blade technology proposed to have originated in the Altai region of Southern Siberia. The lowest levels of the site are now dated from 40,000 to 25,000 years ago.
Teilhard spent the periods between 1926-1935 and 1939-1945 studying and researching the geology and paleontology of the region. Among other accomplishments, he improved understanding of China's sedimentary deposits and established approximate ages for various layers. He also produced a geological map of China. It was during the period 1926-1935 that he joined the excavation that discovered Peking Man.
From 1912 to 1914, Teilhard began his paleontology education by working in the laboratory of the French National Museum of Natural History, studying the mammals of the middle Tertiary. Later he studied elsewhere in Europe. This included spending 5 days over the course of a 3-month period in the middle of 1913 as a volunteer assistant helping to dig with Arthur Smith Woodward and Charles Dawson at the Piltdown site. Teilhard's brief time assisting with digging there occurred many months after the discovery of the first fragments of the fraudulent "Piltdown Man". Stephen Jay Gould judged that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conspired with Dawson in the Piltdown forgery. Most Teilhard experts (including all three Teilhard biographers) and many scientists (including the scientists who uncovered the hoax and investigated it) have rejected the suggestion that he participated in the hoax.