All Annotations of CMC Magazine: Teilhard de Chardin and the Noosphere[Preview]

saved by4 people, first byshadeheim on 2007-09-14, last byMatthew Heinrich on 2008-04-14

• Sadly, on another front, Teilhard faced the crisis of his life. He had
  continued to explore the lines of thought that had begun with his "Cosmic
  Life." Perhaps inevitably, his observations came to the attention of Church
  authorities. The reaction to some of Teilhard's ideas was ultimately
  severe. He was deprived of his teaching position and admonished not to
  publish his observations on religion and science. He observed that
  restriction until his death in 1955. It was only afterward that
  collections of his essays were published as well as his central work,
  The
  Phenomenon of Man.
• Sadly, on another front, Teilhard faced the crisis of his life. He had
  continued to explore the lines of thought that had begun with his "Cosmic
  Life." Perhaps inevitably, his observations came to the attention of Church
  authorities. The reaction to some of Teilhard's ideas was ultimately
  severe. He was deprived of his teaching position and admonished not to
  publish his observations on religion and science. He observed that
  restriction until his death in 1955. It was only afterward that
  collections of his essays were published as well as his central work,
  The
  Phenomenon of Man.
• In 1925, Teilhard wrote in an essay entitled Hominization:
  "And this
  amounts to imagining, in one way or another, above the animal biosphere a
  
  human sphere, a sphere of reflection, of conscious invention, of conscious
  souls (the noosphere, if you will)" (1966, p. 63) It was a neologism
  employing the Greek word noos for "mind."
• Teilhard was convinced that geogenesis moved in the direction of an ever
  increasing conscious that brought about a biogenesis that evolved in the
  same direction.
• Teilhard was also convinced that a further and even more profound change
  had taken place. On the one hand we could see humanity simply swept along
  in a evolutionary stream into the future over which he had no control. Or,
  we could see that an evolution conscious of itself could also direct
  itself.
• There we continue Teilhard's treatment of noogenesis: "We are faced with a
  harmonized collectivity of consciousnesses to a sort of superconciousness.
  The earth not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of thought, but
  becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope, a single unanimous
  reflection."