Chardin's Ray has, since it gained its artist entrance to the French Academy in 1728, both represented the height of still life technique and, with its very materiality, gummed up theoretical ...attempts to understand what it means to represent life (Figure 1). Diderot's famous comment, that Chardin's 'depictions of inanimate things are mistaken for nature herself because he paints flesh as he pleases C'est qu'ilfait de la chair quand il lui plait,·1 expresses the uncanny, immanent frisson of vibrant matter that his paintings still communicate to critics.
As the number of detected Earth-like exoplanets keeps increasing, the prospect of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations becomes day after day more plausible. It has been noticed that the ...encounter between space civilizations implies a fusion of Big Histories. By following Teilhard, the authors argue that the hypothetical contact with alien intelligent life would also result in a merging of the noospheres. The long-term perspective of this process is the awakening of the entire universe. This article provides a history of the idea of noosphere, a reconstruction of Teilhard's "sociological theory," and an exploration of the theological consequences of his theory.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be discussed in the literature as either a promise or threat to the human person; yet the use and development of AI continues unabated. Two ...philosophical trends are discussed here with regard to AI: transhumanism and posthumanism. Whereas transhumanism follows the enlightenment project of human betterment, posthumanism arises out of critical feminism and focuses on expanded embodiment. This article builds on posthumanism by discussing the emerging techno-human as an AI life system, a tertium quid between biology and machine, functioning according to a new logic of triadic relationships. The intermediate complex of the AI-human is a new lens for human becoming. The insights of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on the noosphere and ultrahumanism elucidate AI emergent personhood on a new level of complexified consciousness, indicating a fundamental role for religion in technoevolution.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) research assumes that we live in an intelligence-friendly universe. But do we live in a spiritual-friendly universe? We include the spiritual quest ...in a new multidisciplinary approach to SETI. In a thought experiment, we consider two types of alien civilizations by including a Spiritual factor in the Drake Equation. Using the analogy of planetary biomarkers and the concept of noosphere introduced by Teilhard de Chardin, we propose two spiritual markers that could evidence the presence of a noosphere in an exoplanet.
In 1925, the French Jesuit geologist, paleontologist, and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was removed from his teaching position at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He spent most of the next ...twenty years in China and his major theological writings were not published during his lifetime. We have uncovered major new archival sources on the investigation of Teilhard by the Jesuit curia and the Holy Office of the Roman Catholic Church. These include the Six Propositions to which he was required to subscribe, which are here published and analyzed for the first time, along with his subscription. Associated correspondence, including a letter written by Teilhard to the Jesuit superior general Wlodimir Ledóchowski, enables a fuller understanding of Teilhard's response to the investigation of him. Moreover, comparison with similar investigations into other theologians in the first half of the 1920s allows an assessment of how the complex power dynamics between the Jesuit curia, the Holy Office, and Pope Pius XI shaped the outcome.
In this essay I explore three firsthand accounts of religious faith from The First World War: Forsaken by Private Orr, The Letters of John Ayscough to His Mother, and The Making of a Mind: Letters ...from a Soldier Priest 1914‐1919, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. These three priests provide us with a glimpse of how faithful people responded to very challenging situations. Private Orr came into the war as an ordained priest, but lost his faith after two years of fighting. Monsignor Ayscough worked mainly with wounded soldiers, offering them pastoral care in many different settings. Teilhard de Chardin served as a stretcher‐bearer on the frontlines of many fierce battles, earning the respect he would need to talk to soldiers about their faith in the moments just before they went ‘over the top.’ In a concluding section, I try to draw out some implications of their stories for pastoral care today.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has written extensively about Christian involvement in secular affairs. The influence of these writings on the Vatican II document The Church and the Modern World has been ...well established, but his views on this subject are intimately related to his theology of the kingdom and his eschatology, which have been more controversial. In this article, we will attempt to distinguish several aspects or themes of his motivating arguments about secular work, in the hope that these distinctions may help give some of these themes a wider reach.
Teilhard de Chardin had a broad vision of religion and evolution. Religion was less a human phenomenon for Teilhard than a cosmological one, serving a vital role in evolution by orienting cosmic life ...toward ultimate fulfillment. In this respect, he felt that world religions are still too tribal and separate to satisfy adequately the spiritual needs of the earth. Hence, a new convergence of world religions is needed for a renewed spirit of the earth. This essay examines Teilhard's insights on the convergence of world religions and his notion that Christianity is a religion of evolution, normative of evolution, and thus the form of a new religion of the earth.
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