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octavia_cade 's review for:
The Phenomenon of Man
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The thing about reading science books from times gone past (in this case 6+ decades ago) is that the science, especially if it's in a fast-moving field like evolution, is frequently out of date. The book's wrong, is what I'm saying. That doesn't mean it lacks value from a history-of-science standpoint, though. And really, that's a thematically accurate judgement. Science is a self-correcting method, and it's only by exploring dead ends that we can establish that they are in fact dead ends, and get on to something closer to accurate. I liked reading this book because it was interesting, but three stars shouldn't be taken as endorsement of accuracy.
That inaccuracy is spurred on not only by the state of knowledge at time of writing, but by the author's religious bias. de Chardin was a scientist, but he was also a priest, and he admits himself, towards the end of the book, that had his faith not been what it was he very likely wouldn't have come up with this theory (which, naturally acts in support of said faith). Source of inspiration doesn't necessarily prove a theory wrong - the structure of benzene, for instance, was deduced from a dream of the Ouroboros snake - but the bias is there, and it's influencing the science. de Chardin's theory, in a nutshell, is that evolution is rising to the point of perfecting humanity's spiritual state, and though he doesn't bring Christianity into the book directly, not until the very end, its influence is clearly there from the beginning, and it's causing de Chardin to gloss over steps. One of his frequent rhetorical flourishes is to state something like "We are agreed that..." at which point I stop and say aloud, "I am not agreed!" because he hasn't put forward sufficient evidence to convince me, but there it is. Science is method and experiment. He puts forward no method. He describes no experiment. The thesis of his book is "this is what I have observed, and here is how I have reasoned that my observations can fit in with my religion". Again, it's an interesting theory... but he doesn't have the evidence.
That inaccuracy is spurred on not only by the state of knowledge at time of writing, but by the author's religious bias. de Chardin was a scientist, but he was also a priest, and he admits himself, towards the end of the book, that had his faith not been what it was he very likely wouldn't have come up with this theory (which, naturally acts in support of said faith). Source of inspiration doesn't necessarily prove a theory wrong - the structure of benzene, for instance, was deduced from a dream of the Ouroboros snake - but the bias is there, and it's influencing the science. de Chardin's theory, in a nutshell, is that evolution is rising to the point of perfecting humanity's spiritual state, and though he doesn't bring Christianity into the book directly, not until the very end, its influence is clearly there from the beginning, and it's causing de Chardin to gloss over steps. One of his frequent rhetorical flourishes is to state something like "We are agreed that..." at which point I stop and say aloud, "I am not agreed!" because he hasn't put forward sufficient evidence to convince me, but there it is. Science is method and experiment. He puts forward no method. He describes no experiment. The thesis of his book is "this is what I have observed, and here is how I have reasoned that my observations can fit in with my religion". Again, it's an interesting theory... but he doesn't have the evidence.