Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Marie-Joseph Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Life

(biographical notice raised from readings :

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

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 Boulle, 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). 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 badly included/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)
(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)