Teilhard's Vision of the Past: The Making of a Method - Softcover

O'Connell, Robert J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082321091X ISBN 13: 9780823210916

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 1982

Synopsis

The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, has been characterized as metaphysics, poetry, and mysticism-virtually everything except what its author claimed it was: a "purely scientific memoir." Professor O'Connell here follows up on a nest of clues, uncovered first in an early unpublished essay, then in the series of essays contained principally in The Vision of the Past. Those clues all point to Teilhard's intimate familiarity with the philosophy of science propounded by the celebrated Pierre Duhem. It was Duhem's central claim that science, to remain true to itself, must aim at establishing a genuine "natural classification" phenomenal reality. That insight, Professor O'Connell argues, guided Teilhard's lifelong effort to describe the "imposed reality-factors" which science in its variety of forms suggests as ingredients and operative at every phase in the evolutionary development of planet Earth. Limiting his focus to the way Teilhard unfolded his vision of the past, Professor O'Connell concludes that those who deprecate Teilhard as unscientific betray little awareness of how sophisticated his understanding of science truly was.

About this title

About the Author

Robert J. O’Connell, S. J. was a Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. His has five publications on St. Augustine, as well as several studies of Plato, William James, and Teilhard de Chardin. In 2015 he established the O’Connell established the O’Connell Initiative at Fordham, a forum for intellectual exploration, that brought together scholars of every aspect of capitalism.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 1982
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 082321091X
• ISBN 13: 9780823210916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 205