Panmobilism and optimism in teilhardian humanism

2.1.2. Convergence and Complexification

Julian HUXLEY, one of the renowned commentators of our author, tells us that Teilhard de Chardin

[...] usually uses convergence to denote the tendency of mankind, during its evolution, to superpose centripetal on centrifugal trends, so as to prevent centrifugal differentiation from leading to fragmentation, and eventually to incorporate the results of differentiation in an organized and unified pattern. ²

According to Teilhard de Chardin, human convergence was first manifested on the genetic or biological level: after Homo sapiens began to differentiate into distinct races or subspecies, migration and intermarriage prevented the pioneers from going further, and led to increasing interbreeding between all human variants. As a result, man is the only successful type which remained as a single interbreeding group or species, and has not radiated out into a number of biologically separated assemblages like birds with about 8,500 species, or the insects with over half a million.³ Cultural differentiation came in later and produced a number of psychosocial units with different cultures. Later on, the process known to anthropologists as cultural diffusion, facilitated by migration and improved communications led to an accelerating counter-process of cultural convergence, and so towards the union of the whole human species into a single interthinking group based on a single self-developing framework of thought, the noosystem.

^I Norbertus Maximiliaan Wildiers, An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin. New York, I968, pp. 5I-52

² Julian Huxley in the introduction of The Phenomenon of Man, New York, I959, p. I2.

³ Id.

Again, Teilhard de Chardin showed himself aware of the danger that this noosystem might destroy the valuable results of cultural diversification, and lead to drab uniformity and not to a rich and potent pattern of variety in unity. However, as Julian Huxley tells us, he did not discuss the evolutionary value of cultural variety in detail, but contented himself by maintaining that East and West are culturally complementary and that both are needed for the further synthesis and unification of world thou ght. ^I All cultures, all civilizations, all peoples are called to come upon together through convergence in order to build up the civilization of the universal.

Complexification in Teilhardian metaphysics seems to be the valuable but rather difficult concept to be understood. This concept includes the genesis of increasingly elaborate organisation during Cosmo genesis, as manifested in the passage from subatomic units to atoms, from atoms to inorganic and later to organic molecules, thence to the first subcellular living units or self-replicating assemblages of molecules, and then to cells, to multicellular individuals, to cephalized metazoan with brains, to primitive man, and now to civilized societies.²

Still, Huxley affirms that for Teilhard de Chardin, it involves something more as

he says:

He speaks of complexification as an all-pervading tendency, involving the universe in all its parts in an enroulernent organique sur soi&rnerne, or by an alternative metaphor, as a reploiernent sur soi&rnerne. He thus envisages the world-stuff as being 'rolled up' or 'folded in' upon itself, both locally and in its entirety, and adds that the process is accompanied by an increase of energetic 'tension' in the resultant 'corpuscular' organizations, or individualized constructions of increased organizational complexity.³

^I Julian Huxley in the introduction of The Phenomenon of Man, New York, I959, p. I5.

² Id.

³ Ibid., pp. I5-I6

Teilhard de Chardin also maintains that complexification by convergent integration leads to the intensification of mental subjective activity - in other words to the evolution towards progressively more conscious mind. Thus he asserts that full consciousness as seen in man is to be defined as the specific effect of organised complexity. As such, we must envisage the intensification of the mind, the raising of mental potential, as being the necessary consequence of complexification, operating by the convergent integration of increasingly complex units of organization.^I

For Teilhard de Chardin, the process of convergence in totality is one which occurs naturally, according to the pattern of the evolutionary process itself. Nevertheless, reflective man is capable of choosing whether to cooperate in the process or to oppose to it. He is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will be neither foolish enough nor wicked enough to defeat this totalisation.

Teilhard de Chardin is convinced that by taking note of the whole phenomenon, as it is and as it is given, something like the medieval synthesis may once again be achieved. The deeper each discipline delves and the more truth they respectively uncover, the closer they come to one another. He articulates his conviction:

Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole. I say `converge' advisedly, but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from different angles and on different planes. Take any book written by one of the great modern scientists, such as Poincaré, Einstein or Jeans, and you will see that it is impossible to attempt a general scientific interpretation of the universe without giving the impression of trying to explain it through and through. But look a little more closely and you will see that this `hyperphysics' is still not a metaphysic.²

I _Id.

While Teilhard de Chardin believes in the differentiation of the spheres of inquiry, scientific, theological or philosophical, he laments about their compartmentalization or disassociation. It is this that has led humanity to be somehow excluded from scientific study. Humanity is examined but not as a whole, not, that is, as the thinking part of the rest of the world. Even our everyday language displays this divorce between the hard sciences, on the one hand, and the humanities on the other. This disassociation is largely responsible for the failure of science, theology and philosophy to converge as they ought. By neglecting crucial data, namely, Teilhard de Chardin thinks, the phenomenon of human interiority in the natural world, science has ensured that these disciplines diverge. Teilhard de Chardin seeks to rectify this situation. He comments:

They treat man as a small separate cosmos, isolated from the rest of the universe. Any number of sciences concern themselves with man, but man, in that which makes him essentially human, still lies outside science. Nevertheless, we have only to think for a moment of the tremendous event represented by the explosion of thought on the surface of the earth to be quite certain that this great episode is something more than a part of the general system of nature: we have to accord to it a position of prime importance, from the point of view both of using and understanding the motive forces of nature.^I

In contrast to this, Teilhard de Chardin wants "to try to develop a homogenous and coherent perspective of our general extended experience of man."² Only such a full treatment of the human phenomenon will provide a sufficiently broad account of reality.