Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was known for writing many theological and philosophical books, in which he sought to unite and synthesize science and religion together.
More relevantly to TV Tropes, he was also a Historical Domain Character upon which about every single fictional scientifically-minded clergyman is ever based.
Teilhard was born in the Château of Sarcenat, the fourth of eleven children of librarian Emmanuel Teilhard de Chardin and Berthe-Adèle, née de Dompierre d'Hornoys of Picardy (interestingly, she's a great-grandniece of Francois Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire). He developed a fascination with the natural world at a very early age, citing the long-extinct volcanic peaks of Auvergne, its forested preserves, and the guidance of his father as formative sources; his piety and spiritual life were nourished by his mother.
When he was twelve, Teilhard entered Notre Dame de Mongre near Villefranche-sur-Saone. During his five years there, as he neared graduation, he wrote to his parents that he intended to become a priest. He received a baccalaureate in 1897 and entered the Jesuit novitiate in Aix-en-Provence two years later.
In 1901, due to an anti-clerical movement in the French Republic, the Jesuits and other religious orders were ousted from France, and the Aix-en-Provence novitiate transferred to Jersey a year later; before the move, Pierre took first vows in the Society of Jesus on 26 March 1902. In 1905, he was sent to Cairo, Egypt, to do his teaching internship at the Jesuit College of St. Francis until 1908. After his tenure in Cairo, he served as a Scholastic at Ore Place in Hastings, East Sussex, where he acquired his theological formation. There, he synthesized his scientific, philosophical, and theological knowledge in light of the theory of evolution, having read Creative Evolution by the French idealist philosopher Henri Bergson and being greatly influenced by his ideas. On 24 August 1911, Teilhard was ordained a priest.
Fr. Teilhard continued his studies in paleontology between 1912 and 1915 in the laboratory of the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, in Paris, studying the mammals of the middle Tertiary period. During this time, he formed a digging team with Arthur Smith Woodward and Charles Dawson to perform investigations at the Piltdown site, where the fragments of the "Piltdown Man" were supposedly found.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Fr. Teilhard worked as a stretcher bearer with the North African Zouaves. His regiment was involved in the battles at the Marne and Epres in 1915, Nieuport in 1916, Verdun in 1917, and Chateau Thierry in 1918. He himself was involved in every engagement, and he received many rewards, like the Legion d'Honneur in 1921.
Fr. Teilhard returned to Paris in 1922 and continued his studies at the Sorbonne, obtaining three degrees in the natural sciences: geology, botany, and zoology. He became a lecturer at the Institut Catholique de Paris and earned his doctorate there.
In 1923, Fr. Teilhard made the first of his paleontological and geologic excursions to China, where he would reside between 1926 and 1946. It was during this first trip, during a stay in Mongolia in the Ordos desert, that Fr. Teilhard wrote The Mass of the World. During his stay in China, he took part in the famous Croisière Jaune Haardt-Citroën, studying the history of the mammals of North China and collaborating with the excavations of Choukoutien, where he discovered that the "Peking Man" was a "faber", a worker of stones and maker of fire.
In 1937, Fr. Teilhard received the Mendel Medal at the Philadelphia Congress in recognition of his work in human paleontology. He also founded the Institute of Geobiology in Peking three years later, and he completed The Phenomenon of Man, a major work of his in which he presents the fourfold sequence of the evolutionary process: galactic, earth, life, and consciousness. He developed a view drawing from both theology and science, that the entirety of evolution, in every meaning from stellar to biological to societal, forms a process that ultimately leads to a union of mankind with God. This ultimate union is the Omega Point. In 1941, Fr. Teilhard submitted this work to Rome for approval, but he was denied.
In October 1948, after returning to France, Fr. Teilhard traveled to the United States. At this time, he was invited to give a series of lectures at Columbia University, but his Jesuit Superior denied this. In July of that same year, Fr. Teilhard was invited to Rome to discuss the controversies surrounding his thoughts, and he realized that the future of his work depended on this encounter. It was during these meetings with the Jesuit general, Fr. Janssens, SJ, that Fr. Teilhard realized that he is not allowed to publish on philosophical and theological subjects, nor was he allowed to take up a position at the College de France. After a period of uncertainty, Fr. Teilhard moved to New York City, after being granted permission by his Jesuit Superiors. He lived the following years with the Jesuit fathers at St. Ignatius Church on Park Avenue.
On 15 March 1955, Fr. Teilhard was at the house of his cousin Jean de Lagarde, and he told his friends that he hoped to die on Easter Sunday. On 10 April that same year, an Easter Sunday, Fr. Teilhard got his wish and had a fatal heart attack. He was buried in the cemetery for the New York Province of the Jesuits at the Jesuit novitiate, St. Andrew-on-Hudson, in Hyde Park, New York.
Reception from Christian thinkers on his essays was mixed, with praise from figures such as Cardinal Henri de Lubac, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis and criticism from others like C. S. Lewis, Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Dietrich Von Hildebrand (Hildebrand wrote about how he and Fr. Teilhard were having a discussion, and it touched on St. Augustine of Hippo. Fr. Teilhard angrily shouted: "Don't mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural."). In fact, the Church issued a monitum (warning) by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1962, cautioning on an uncritical acceptance of Fr. Teilhard's writings. That said, none of his writings were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books, and his spiritual dedication was not questioned.
On the other side, many scientific authorities accuse him of molding science to fit his religious faith and for his role in the so-called "Piltdown Man", which has since been revealed to be a paleoanthropological fraud initiated by Dawson himself (there were doubts about its authenticity from the very beginning, in 1912, but it wasn't until 1953, forty-one years later, that the "Piltdown Man" was proved to be a hoax). Biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay accusing Fr. Teilhard of being a co-conspirator in the hoax, but paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Oakley, who corresponded with Fr. Teilhard about the Piltdown Man when it was exposed as a hoax, disavowed the essay. He even wrote a letter to the popular science mazagine New Scientist in response to an article by a Dr. L. Harrison Matthews and affirmed that Fr. Teilhard had no involvement in manufacturing the fraud; if anything, he was actually duped and set up to be the fall guy. Fr. Teilhard, for his part, wrote that he was pleased to hear of Dr. Oakley's confusions that the Piltdown Man was a forgery, "in spite of the fact that, sentimentally speaking, it spoils one of [his] brightest and earliest palaeontological memories..."
Whether through his writings or merely as a unique persona, he remains a source of inspiration for writers of fiction and non-fiction.
Related tropes:
- Adventurer Archaeologist: He was one of the real-life examples, and definitely the go-to example when you need one to also be a clergyman. Among other things, he took part in excavations alongside Roy Chapman Andrews, the man who was a direct inspiration for Indiana Jones.
- Badass Preacher: Perhaps not in the sense of actually fighting (although he served as a stretcher-bearer during the First World War and even received praise for valor), but the man was far more active your average parish priest.
- The Heretic: His views brought him into conflict with Church authorities more than once. His fictional counterparts are almost always shown as controversial but ultimately in the right, and when he is directly referenced in sci-fi, it is usually to show that the Catholic Church grew to accept his views rather than the other way.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: He's probably the one single clergyman that the generally a-religious sci-fi holds in high regard, and any aversion of this trope that is specifically Catholic-themed is very likely to bring him up in one way or another.
- The Singularity: He was one of the pioneers of the concept, and is often referenced in discussions on it, although his idea of the Omega Point had a rather unique take — instead of "a God am I" or robot wars, it was more like "achieve a perfect union with God".
Appearances in fiction:
- Salvador Dalí is said to have been fascinated by the man. The painting The Ecumenical Council supposedly represents the "interconnectedness" of the Omega Point.
- The character Jean Telemond in Morris West's The Shoes of the Fisherman is based on Teilhard.
- In Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, Teilhard de Chardin has been canonized a saint, showing that the Catholic Church's opinion of him changed in the future. Such is his reputation that Father Paul Duré takes the regnal name Teilhard I after being elected Pope at the end of The Fall of Hyperion, and takes the name Teilhard II when, hundreds of years later, he is resurrected for the final time through the crucifix and is elected Pope again after the final defeat of the TechnoCore.
- Teilhard is mentioned and the Omega Point explained in Arthur C. Clarke's and Stephen Baxter's The Light of Other Days.
