Editing Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (section)

==Evaluations by scientists==

=== Julian Huxley ===
[[Julian Huxley]], the evolutionary biologist, in the preface to the 1955 edition of ''The Phenomenon of Man'', praised the thought of Teilhard de Chardin for looking at the way in which human development needs to be examined within a larger integrated universal sense of evolution, though admitting he could not follow Teilhard all the way.<ref>Huxley, Julian "Preface" to Teilhard de Chardin, Teilhard (1955) "The Phenomenon of Man" (Fontana)</ref> In the publication Encounter, Huxley wrote: "The force and purity of Teilhard's thought and expression ... has given the world a picture not only of rare clarity but pregnant with compelling conclusions."<ref name=":5">{{Cite web |title=Acclaim for Teilhard and his Works |url=http://tcreek1.jimdofree.com/acclaim-for-teilhard/ |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=Teilhard de Chardin |language=en-US}}</ref>

===Theodosius Dobzhansky===
[[Theodosius Dobzhansky]], writing in 1973, drew upon Teilhard's insistence that evolutionary theory provides the core of how man understands his relationship to nature, calling him "one of the great thinkers of our age".<ref name="Dobz_Nothing">{{Cite journal |last=Dobzhansky |first=Theodosius |author-link=Theodosius Dobzhansky |date=March 1973 |title=Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution |journal=[[American Biology Teacher]] |volume=35 |issue=3 |pages=125–129 |doi=10.2307/4444260 |jstor=4444260 |s2cid=207358177}} Reprinted in J. Peter Zetterberg (ed.), ''Evolution versus Creationism'' (1983), ORYX Press.</ref> Dobzhansky was renowned as the president of four prestigious scientific associations: the [[Genetics Society of America]], the [[American Society of Naturalists]], the [[Society for the Study of Evolution]] and the [[American Society of Zoologists]]. He also called Teilhard "one of the greatest intellects of our time."<ref name=":5" />

=== Daniel Dennett ===
[[Daniel Dennett]] claimed "it has become clear to the point of unanimity among scientists that Teilhard offered nothing serious in the way of an alternative to orthodoxy; the ideas that were peculiarly his were confused, and the rest was just bombastic redescription of orthodoxy."<ref name="Dennett1995">{{Cite book |first=Daniel C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y77BAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA320 |title=Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life |date=1995 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=978-1-4391-2629-5 |pages=320– |last=Dennett}}</ref>

=== David Sloan Wilson ===
In 2019, evolutionary biologist [[David Sloan Wilson]] praised Teilhard's book ''The Phenomenon of Man'' as  "scientifically prophetic in many ways", and considers his own work as an updated version of it, commenting that<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wilson |first=David Sloan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_qZbDwAAQBAJ |title=This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution |date=26 February 2019 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-1-101-87021-1}}</ref> "[m]odern evolutionary theory shows that what Teilhard meant by the Omega Point is achievable in the foreseeable future."

=== Robert Francoeur ===
[[Robert T. Francoeur|Robert Francoeur]] (1931-2012), the American biologist, said the Phenomenon of Man "will be one of the few books that will be remembered after the dust of the century has settled on many of its companions."

===Stephen Jay Gould===
In an essay published in the magazine ''[[Natural History (magazine)|Natural History]]'' (and later compiled as the 16th essay in his book ''[[Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes]]''), American biologist [[Stephen Jay Gould]] made a case for Teilhard's guilt in the [[Piltdown Man|Piltdown Hoax]], arguing that Teilhard has made several compromising slips of the tongue in his correspondence with paleontologist [[Kenneth Oakley]], in addition to what Gould termed to be his "suspicious silence" about Piltdown despite having been, at that moment in time, an important milestone in his career.<ref name="Gould1980">{{cite book |last=Gould |first=Stephen Jay |author-link=Stephen Jay Gould |date=1994 |title=Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History|url=https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25397178M/Hen's_Teeth_and_Horse's_Toes_-_Further_Reflections_in_Natural_History |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=0393017168|ol=25397178M }}</ref> In a later book, Gould claims that [[Steven Rose]] wrote that "Teilhard is revered as a mystic of genius by some, but among most biologists is seen as little more than a [[charlatan]]."<ref name="Gould2006">{{Cite book |last=Gould |first=Stephen Jay |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yfXJhKmp1wUC&pg=PA69 |title=The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould |publisher=W.W. Norton |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-393-06498-8 |pages=69–}}{{clarify|date=August 2018}}<!--is Gould quoting Rose? or is Rose editing Gould? In what context was the statement made, and why are we citing Gould as a reference?--></ref>

Numerous scientists and Teilhard experts have refuted Gould’s theories about Teilhard’s guilt in the hoax, saying they are based on inaccuracies. In an article in New Scientist in September, 1981, Peter Costello said claims that Teilhard had been silent were factually wrong: “Much else of what is said about Teilhard is also wrong. …. After the exposure of the hoax, he did not refuse to make a statement; he gave a statement to the press on 26 November, 1953, which was published in New York and London the next day. .... If questions needed to be asked about Teilhard's role in the Piltdown affair, they could have been asked when he was in London during the summer of 1953. They were not asked. But enough is now known to prove Teilhard innocent of all involvement in the hoax.”<ref name=":0" /> Teilhard also wrote multiple letters about the hoax at the request of and in reply to Oakley, one of the 3 scientists who uncovered it, in an effort to help them get to the bottom of what occurred 40 years earlier. 

Another of the three scientists, S.J. Weiner said he spoke to Teilhard extensively about Piltdown and "He (Teilhard) discussed all the points that I put to him perfectly frankly and openly."<ref name=":1" /> Weiner spent years investigating who was responsible for the hoax and concluded that Charles Dawson was the sole culprit.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=Lukas |first=Mary |date=1983 |title=The Haunting, article in the journal Antiquity |url=http://www2.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/teilhard_de_chardin/Chardin_defend/haunting.html |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www2.clarku.edu |archive-date=19 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231219132046/http://www2.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/teilhard_de_chardin/Chardin_defend/haunting.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> He also said: "Gould would have you accept that Oakley was the same mind (as himself); but it is not so. When Gould's article came out Oakley dissociated himself from it. ...I have seen Oakley recently and he has no reservations... about his belief that Teilhard had nothing to do with the planting of this material and manufacture of the fraud."

In November, 1981, Oakley himself published a letter in [[New Scientist]] saying: "There is no proved factual evidence known to me that supports the premise that Father Teilhard de Chardin gave Charles Dawson a piece of fossil elephant molar tooth as a souvenir of his time spent in North Africa. This faulty thread runs throughout the reconstruction ... After spending a year thinking about this accusation, I have at last become convinced that it is erroneous."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Oakley |first=Kenneth |date=November 1981 |title=Piltdown Man, Letter to New Scientist |url=https://www2.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_defend/piltdownman.html |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www2.clarku.edu |archive-date=28 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220628221718/http://www2.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_defend/piltdownman.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Oakley also pointed out that after Teilhard got his degree in paleontology and gained experience in the field, he published scientific articles that show he found the scientific claims of the two Piltdown leaders to be incongruous, and that Teilhard did not agree they had discovered an ape-man that was a missing link between apes and humans.

In a comprehensive rebuttal of Gould in America magazine, Mary Lukas said his claims about Teilhard were "patently ridiculous” and “wilder flights of fancy” that were easily disprovable and weak. For example, she notes Teilhard was only briefly and minimally involved in the Piltdown project for four reasons: 1) He was only a student in his early days of studying paleontology. 2) His college was in France and he was at the Piltdown site in Britain for a total of just 5 days over a short period of three months out of the 7-year project. 3) He was simply a volunteer assistant, helping with basic digging. 4) This limited involvement ended prior to the most important claimed discovery, due to his being conscripted to serve in the French army.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lukas |first=Mary |date=1981 |title=Teilhard and the Pildown "Hoax", article in the magazine America |url=https://www2.clarku.edu/faculty/djoyce/piltdown/map_prim_suspects/teilhard_de_chardin/chardin_defend/teilhardandpilthoax(lukas).html |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www2.clarku.edu}}</ref> She added: "Further, according to his letters, both published and unpublished, to friends, Teilhard's relationship to Dawson was anything but close." 

Lukas said Gould made the claims for selfish reasons: “The charge gained Mr. Gould two weeks of useful publicity and prepared reviewers to give a friendly reception to the collection of essays” that he was about to publish. She said Teilhard was “beyond doubt the most famous of” all the people who were involved in the excavations” and “the one who could gather headlines most easily…. The shock value of the suggestion that the philosopher-hero was also a criminal was stunning.” Two years later, Lukas published a more detailed article in the British scholarly journal [[Antiquity (journal)|Antiquity]] in which she further refuted Gould, including an extensive timeline of events.<ref name=":3" /> 

Winifred McCulloch wrote a very detailed rebuttal of Gould, calling his claim “highly subjective,” “very idiosyncratic,” filled with clear “weaknesses” and “shown to be impossible.” She said Weiner had criticized Gould's accusations in a talk at Georgetown University in 1981.<ref>{{Cite web |last=McCulloch |first=Winifred |date=December 1983 |title=A Readers Guide to S. J. Gould's Piltdown Argument |url=http://www2.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_defend/readersguide.html |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www2.clarku.edu |archive-date=28 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220628211117/http://www2.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_defend/readersguide.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>  She also noted that Oakley wrote in a letter to Lukas in 1981 that her article in America constituted "a total refutation of Gould's interpretation of Teilhard's letters to me in 1953-1954. . . . You have . . . unearthed evidence that will seriously undermine Gould's confidence in having any evidence against Teilhard in regard to what he (Teilhard) said in his letters to me."<ref name=":2" /> She wrote: "Gould's method of presenting his main argument might be called ''inferred intent'' - projecting onto Teilhard ways of thinking and acting that have no evidential base and are completely foreign to all we know of Teilhard. With Gould it seems that the guilty verdict came first, then he created a persona to fit the crime.” 

===Peter Medawar===
In 1961, British immunologist and Nobel laureate [[Peter Medawar]] wrote a scornful review of ''The Phenomenon of Man'' for the journal ''[[Mind (journal)|Mind]]'': "the greater part of it [...] is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself. [...] Teilhard practiced an intellectually unexacting kind of science [...]. He has no grasp of what makes a logical argument or what makes for proof. He does not even preserve the common decencies of scientific writing, though his book is professedly a scientific treatise. [...] Teilhard habitually and systematically cheats with words [...], uses in metaphor words like energy, tension, force, impetus, and dimension as if they retained the weight and thrust of their special scientific usages. [...] It is the style that creates the illusion of content."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Medawar |first=P.&nbsp;B. |author-link=Peter Medawar |year=1961 |title=Critical Notice |url=http://bactra.org/Medawar/phenomenon-of-man.html |journal=[[Mind (journal)|Mind]] |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |volume=70 |issue=277 |pages=99–106 |doi=10.1093/mind/LXX.277.99}}</ref>

In 2014, Donald Wayne Viney evaluated Medawar's review and concluded that the case made against Teilhard was "remarkably thin, marred by misrepresentations and elementary philosophical blunders."<ref>Viney, Donald Wayne, "Teilhard, Medawar, and the New Atheism," in Ilia Delio ed., ''From Teilhard To Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe''. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2014, p. 128.</ref> These defects, Viney noted, were uncharacteristic of Medawar's other work.

In another response, [[John Allen Grim]] said when Teilhard "wrote The Phenomenon of Man … he was using science there in a very broad sense. What he was really looking for was to be actually more radically empirical than conventional science is. Conventional science leaves out so much that's really there, especially our own subjectivity and some of the other things that are qualitative and value laden that are going on in the world. That science … has abstracted from values, meaning, subjectivity, purpose, God, and talked only about physical causation. Teilhard knew this, because when he wrote his [science journal] papers, he didn't bring God, value and so forth into it. But when he wrote The Phenomenon, he was doing something different. But it's not against the spirit of science. It was to actually expand the empirical orientation of science to take into account things that science unfortunately leaves out, like consciousness, for example, which today, in a materialist worldview, doesn't even exist, and yet it's the most palpable experience that any of us has. So if you try to construct a worldview that leaves out something so vital and important as mind to subjectivity, then that's unempirical, that's irrelevant. What we need is a radically empirical approach to the world that includes within what he calls hyperphysics, the experience of consciousness and also the experiences of faith, religions.”<ref>{{Citation |title=Teilhard de Chardin: His Importance in the 21st Century | date=23 June 2015 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnCQHIeucNw |access-date=2023-12-19 |language=en}}</ref>

===Richard Dawkins===
Evolutionary biologist and a [[New Atheism|New Atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] called Medawar's review "devastating" and ''The Phenomenon of Man'' "the quintessence of bad poetic science".<ref name="Dawkins2000">{{Cite book |last=Dawkins |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZudTchiioUoC&pg=PA320 |title=Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder |date=5 April 2000 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |isbn=978-0-547-34735-6 |pages=320ff}}</ref>

=== Karl Stern ===
[[Karl Stern]], the neurobiologist of the [[Montreal Neurological Institute]], wrote: "It happens so rarely that science and wisdom are blended as they were in the person of Teilhard de Chardin."

=== George Gaylord Simpson ===
[[George Gaylord Simpson]] felt that if Teilhard were right, the lifework "of Huxley, Dobzhansky, and hundreds of others was not only wrong, but meaningless", and was mystified by their public support for him.<ref name="BrowningAlioto1973">{{Cite book |last1=Browning |first1=Geraldine O. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RHCqN_lM5bYC&pg=PA91 |title=Teilhard de Chardin: in Quest of the Perfection of Man: An International Symposium |last2=Joseph L. Alioto |last3=Seymour M. Farber |last4=University of California, San Francisco Medical Center |date=January 1973 |publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press |isbn=978-0-8386-1258-3 |pages=91ff}}</ref> He considered Teilhard a friend and his work in paleontology extensive and important, but expressed strongly adverse views of his contributions as scientific theorist and philosopher.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Laporte |first=Léo F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Jd0yGJ3nF9EC&pg=PA191 |title=George Gaylord Simpson: Paleontologist and Evolutionist |date=13 August 2013 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-50545-1 |pages=191ff}}</ref>

=== William G. Pollard ===
[[William G. Pollard]], the physicist and founder of the prestigious [[Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies]] (and its director until 1974), praised Teilhard’s work as "A fascinating and powerful presentation of the amazing fact of the emergence of man in the unfolding drama of the cosmos."<ref name=":5"/>

=== John Barrow and Frank Tipler ===
John Barrow and Frank Tipler, both physicists and cosmologists, base much of their work on Teilhard and use some of his key terms such as the Omega point. However, [[Manuel Alfonseca]], author of 50 books and 200 technical articles, said in an article in the quarterly [[Popular Science]]: "Barrow and Tipler have not understood Teilhard (apparently they have just read '<nowiki/>''The Phenomenon of Man''', at least this is the only work by Teilhard they mention). In fact, they have got everything backwards."

=== Wolfgang Smith ===
[[Wolfgang Smith]], an American scientist versed in Catholic theology, devotes an entire book to the critique of Teilhard's doctrine, which he considers neither scientific (assertions without proofs), nor Catholic (personal innovations), nor metaphysical (the "Absolute Being" is not yet absolute),<ref>Wolfgang Smith, ''Teilhardism and the New Religion: A Thorough Analysis of the Teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin'', Tan Books & Pub, Gastonia/NC, USA, 1988 (republished as ''Theistic Evolution'', Angelico Press, New York, 2012, 270 pages).</ref> and of which the following elements can be noted (all the words in quotation marks are Teilhard's, quoted by Smith):

==== Evolution ====
Smith claims that for Teilhard, evolution is not only a scientific theory but an irrefutable truth "immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience";<ref>P. Teilhard de Chardin, ''The Phenomenon of Man'', Harper & Row, New York, 1965, p. 140 – quoted in W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 2.</ref> it constitutes the foundation of his doctrine.<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 2.</ref> Matter becomes spirit and humanity moves towards a super-humanity thanks to complexification (physico-chemical, then biological, then human), socialization, scientific research and technological and cerebral development;<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., pp. 177, 201.</ref> the explosion of the first atomic bomb is one of its milestones,<ref>P. Teilhard de Chardin, ''The Phenomenon of Man'', ''Op. cit'', p. 149 – quoted in W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 243-244.</ref> while waiting for "the vitalization of matter by the creation of super-molecules, the remodeling of the human organism by means of hormones, control of heredity and sex by manipulation of [[genes]] and [[chromosomes]] [...]".<ref>P. Teilhard de Chardin, ''The Future of Mankind'', Harper & Row, New York, 1964, p. 149 – quoted in W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 243.</ref>

==== Matter and spirit ====
Teilhard maintains that the human spirit (which he identifies with the ''anima'' and not with the ''spiritus'') originates in a matter which becomes more and more complex until it produces life, then consciousness, then the consciousness of being conscious, holding that the immaterial can emerge from the material.<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., pp. 42-43.</ref> At the same time, he supports the idea of the presence of embryos of consciousness from the very genesis of the universe: "We are logically forced to assume the existence [...] of some sort of psyche" infinitely diffuse in the smallest particle.<ref>P. Teilhard de Chardin, ''The Phenomenon of Man'', ''Op. cit'', pp. 301-302 – quoted in W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., pp. 49-50.</ref>

==== Theology ====
Smith believes that since Teilhard affirms that "God creates evolutively", he denies the [[Book of Genesis]],<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., pp. 13, 19.</ref> not only because it attests that God created man, but that he created him in his own image, thus perfect and complete, then that man fell, that is to say the opposite of an ascending evolution.<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 137.</ref> That which is metaphysically and theologically "above" - symbolically speaking - becomes for Teilhard "ahead", yet to come;<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 69.</ref> even God, who is neither perfect nor timeless, evolves in symbiosis with the World,{{refn|group=note|"I see in the World a mysterious product of completion and fulfillment for the absolute Being himself." ''The Heart of Matter'', Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1979, p. 54 - quoted in Wolfgang Smith, ''Teilhardism and the New Religion'', Tan Books & Pub, Gastonia/NC, USA, 1988, p. 104.}} which Teilhard, a resolute [[pantheism|pantheist]],<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 110.</ref> venerates as the equal of the Divine.<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 127.</ref> As for Christ, not only is he there to activate the wheels of progress and complete the evolutionary ascent, but he himself evolves.{{refn|group=note|"It is Christ, in all truth, who saves, but should we not immediately add that at the same time it is Christ who is saved by evolution?" ''The Heart of Matter'', Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1979, p. 92 - quoted in Wolfgang Smith, ''Teilhardism and the New Religion'', Tan Books & Pub, Gastonia/NC, USA, 1988, p. 117.}}.<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., pp. 117, 127.</ref>

==== New religion ====
As he wrote to a cousin: "What dominates my interests increasingly is the effort to establish in me and define around me a new religion (call it a better Christianity, if you will)...",<ref>P. Teilhard de Chardin, ''Letters to Léontine Zanta'', Harper & Row, New York, 1965, p. 114 (letter of 26 January 1936) – quoted in W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 210.</ref> and elsewhere: "a Christianity re-incarnated for a second time in the spiritual energies of Matter".<ref>P. Teilhard de Chardin, ''The Heart of Matter'', Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1979, p. 96 – quoted in W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 22.</ref> The more Teilhard refines his theories, the more he emancipates himself from established Christian doctrine:<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 102.</ref> a "religion of the earth" must replace a "religion of heaven".<ref>P. Teilhard de Chardin, ''Science and Christ'', Collins, London, 1968, p. 120 – quoted in W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., p. 208.</ref> By their common faith in Man, he writes, Christians, [[Marxism|Marxists]], [[Darwinism|Darwinists]], materialists of all kinds will ultimately join around the same summit: the Christic [[Omega Point]].<ref>W. Smith, ''Op. cit''., pp. 22, 188.</ref>

=== Lucien Cuénot ===
[[Lucien Cuénot]], the biologist who proved that [[Mendelism]] applied to animals as well as plants through his experiments with mice, wrote: "Teilhard's greatness lay in this, that in a world ravaged by neurosis he provided an answer to out modern anguish and reconciled man with the cosmos and with himself by offering him an "ideal of humanity that, through a higher and consciously willed synthesis, would restore the instinctive equilibrium enjoyed in ages of primitive simplicity."<ref name=":5" /> Mendelism is a group of biological inheritance principles developed by the Catholic friar-scientist [[Gregor Mendel]]. Though for many years Mendelism was rejected by most biologists and other scientists, its principles - combined with the [[Boveri–Sutton chromosome theory]] of inheritance - eventually became the core of [[classical genetics]].