Teilhard de Chardin: Beyond Ufology and Skepticism

Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.


I’m attracted to brilliant fringe thinkers, as many of you know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin

And while Tielhard de Chardin is, not for me, a fringe thinker but a magnificent interlocutor of metaphysics, cosmology, science, and theology among other disciplines of human activity, he, like all disruptors of orthodoxy, has his critics (from Wikipedia):

According to Daniel Dennett, “it has become clear to the point of unanimity among scientists that Teilhard offered nothing serious in the way of an alternative to orthodoxy; the ideas that were peculiarly his were confused, and the rest was just bombastic redescription of orthodoxy.” Similarly, Steven Rose wrote that “Teilhard is revered as a mystic of genius by some, but amongst most biologists is seen as little more than a charlatan.”

In 1961, the Nobel Prize-winner Peter Medawar, a British immunologist, wrote a scornful review of The Phenomenon Of Man for the journal Mind: “the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself”. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins called Medawar’s review “devastating” and The Phenomenon of Man “the quintessence of bad poetic science”.

Sir Julian Huxley, the evolutionary biologist, praised the thought of Teilhard de Chardin for looking at the way in which human development needs to be examined within a larger integrated universal sense of evolution, though admitting he could not follow Teilhard all the way. Theodosius Dobzhansky drew upon Teilhard’s insistence that evolutionary theory provides the core of how man understands his relationship to nature, calling him “one of the great thinkers of our age”.

George Gaylord Simpson, however, felt that if Teilhard were right, the lifework “of Huxley, Dobzhansky, and hundreds of others was not only wrong, but meaningless”, and was mystified by their public support for him.[40] He considered Teilhard a friend and his work in paleontology extensive and important, but expressed strongly adverse views of his contributions as scientific theorist and philosopher.

David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, wrote that Teilhard has been “largely forgotten as a scientist” but believes that he remains “amazingly relevan[t]” and anticipated his own work in multilevel selection theory.

Wikipedia (the link I provided above) supplies one pithy, pathetic rejoinder to the above besmirches:

Brian Swimme wrote “Teilhard was one of the first scientists to realize that the human and the universe are inseparable. The only universe we know about is a universe that brought forth the human.”

Philosopher Daniel Dennett, often presented here (at this blog), says that consciousness is an illusion, and has as many critics as Teilhard has, maybe more.

(Dennett is brilliant too, not as comprehensive as Teilhard, but in the ball park.)

My point in presenting Teilhard again is to supply his encompassing views to UFO tyros who might be able to comprehend that their view of the Earth as a popular site for extraterrestrial visitors is pathetic and our reality is a lot more complex than what they see and promote in UFO circles.

Many UFO enthusiasts know that Velikovsky’s theories have been lambasted for years but now have, like Freudian thinking, a revival in academic and scientific arenas, just as the Big Bang theory is being dismissed, left and right, by some notable physicists.

Persons skeptical of “fringe” thinking do so at their intellectual peril: UFOs may not be real to some and their ET reality a case of madness, but within the thinking of persons like Teilhard and even Dennett, the validity of UFO conversation and debate may be seen as legitimate and substantive, even when veering into the sludge of illogical rants and outright stupidity.

Teilhard opens the door to some rumination about the orientation of UFOs, which I’ve touched on a while back here and at my other blogs. But Dennett, the anti-Teilhard academic, does too.

One has to present all views because truth and reality are so complex that no one in my circles (or yours) has an inkling of what truth and reality is.

Neither are the waking up in the morning, browsing the internet, commenting on Facebook, or doing a podcast for UFO scallions [sic] who seek edification from numskulls.

One has to take a dip into persons like Teilhard (or Dennett) to get their bearings on what is real, as best as we humans are able to comprehend reality.

This means reading and forcing comprehension on what we’re reading, and letting go of the sensationalist ramblings of ufologists who hope to achieve a modicum of fame amongst UFO buffs, where fame is a fleeting matter of nothingness.

The dynamic fringe is open for review, if one is inclined to seek out members of it. The rewards are greater than you might imagine,

RR http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)