object:1.03 - The Phenomenon of Man
book class:Let Me Explain
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
3. The Phenomenon of Man
The Vision of the Past has enabled us to appreciate the general current
of Evolution and to set the 'human zoological group' at the head of that
movement.
We may now examine more closely the fundamental law of this
cosmic evolution, which makes it coherent for us.
The best vantage-point we can choose for this is that at which the
whole process of Evolution is clearly illuminated: the only point, too,
at which we are, by nature, at home. We turn, therefore, to the study
of 'the phenomenon of man'.
I. WHAT IS THE PHENOMENON OF MAN?
By the expression 'the Phenomenon of Man' we mean here
the empirical fact of the appearance in our universe of the
power of reflection and thought. For enormous periods the
earth certainly lacked any real manifestation of life. Then for
another enormous period in the layer of organic matter
which appeared on its solid or watery envelope, it presented
only signs of spontaneity, and unreflective consciousness
(the animal feels and perceives; but he does not appear to
know that he feels and perceives). Finally, in a relatively
recent epoch, spontaneity and consciousness acquired on
earth, in the zone of life that had become human, the prop-
erty of isolating and individualizing themselves in their own
right. Man knows that he knows. He emerges from his ac-
tions. He dominates them in however feeble a way. He can
therefore abstract, combine and foresee. He reflects. He
thinks. (V.P., p. 161.)
From our empirical point of view, reflection is, as the
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Phenomenology
word indicates, the power acquired by a consciousness to
turn in upon itself, to take possession of itself as of an object
endowed with its own particular consistence and value: no
longer merely to know oneself; no longer merely to know,
but to know that one knows. By this individualization of
himself in the depths of himself, the living element, which
heretofore has been spread out and divided over a diffuse
circle of perceptions and activities, is constituted for the first
time as a centre in the form of a point at which all impressions
and experiences knit themselves together and fuse into
a unity that is conscious of its own organization.
Now the consequences of such a transformation are im-
mense, visible as clearly in nature as any of the facts re-
corded in physics or astronomy. The being who is the
object of his own reflection, in consequence of that very
doubling back upon himself, becomes in a flash able to
raise himself into a new sphere. In reality, another world is
born. Abstraction, logic, reasoned choice and inventions,
mathematics, art, calculation of space and time, anxieties
and dreams of love - all these activities of inner life are noth-
ing else than the effervescence of the newly-formed centre
as it explodes upon itself.
Proceeding from that, I have a question to ask. If, as fol-
lows from the foregoing, it is the fact of being 'reflective'
which constitutes the strictly 'intelligent' being, can we
seriously doubt that intelligence is the evolutionary lot
proper to man and to man only? If not, can we, under the
influence of some false modesty, hesitate to admit that man's
possession of it constitutes a radical advance on all forms of
life that have gone before him? Admittedly the animal
knows. But it cannot know that it knows: that is quite certain.
If it could, it would long ago have multiplied its inventions
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Let Me Explain
and developed a system of internal constructions that could
not have escaped our observation. In consequence it is denied
access to a whole domain of reality in which we can move
freely. We are separated by a chasm - or a threshold - which
it cannot cross. Because we are reflective we are not only
different but quite other. It is not merely a matter of change
of degree, but of a change of nature, resulting from a change
of state. (P.M., pp. 165-6.)
This event can serve as a point of departure for many phil-
osophical, moral, or religious trains of thought. We would
only view it here, at least preliminarily, simply from the
historical and scientific point of view. For a very long time
there was no thought on earth. Now there is, and to such a
degree, that the face of things is entirely changed. Now we
are really viewing a purely scientific fact, a phenomenon.
What are we to think of this phenomenon?
It is an extraordinary thing. Scientists, for the last hundred
years have been examining with unheard-of subtlety and
daring, the mysteries of material atoms and the living cell.
They have weighed the electron and the stars. They have
divided the vegetable and animal kingdom into hundreds of
thousands of species. They are striving with infinite patience
to link the human form anatomically to that of the other
vertebrates. Passing more directly to the study of our zoolo-
gical type, they endeavour to examine the springs of human
psychology, or to isolate the laws governing the exchanges
of products and services in the growing complexity of our
society. Now in the midst of these great labours, almost no-
body has yet decided to put the main question: 'But what
exactly is the phenomenon of man?' That is to say, in rather
more precise terms, 'What is the place and purpose of this
extraordinary power of thought in the development of the
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Phenomenology
world of experience?' Let us repeat: Man today is scientifi-
cally known and recognized by a great number of detailed
properties or connections. But, perhaps because some are
afraid of lapsing into metaphysics and others of desecrating
the 'soul' by treating it as a simple physical object, man, in
his special and most revealing characteristics, that is to say
in what are called his 'spiritual' properties, is still left out of
our general pictures of the world. Hence this paradoxical
fact: there is a science of the universe without man, and there
is also a science of man as marginal to the universe; but there is
not yet a science of the universe that embraces man as such.
Present-day physics (taking this word in the broad Greek
sense of 'a systematic understanding of all nature') does not
yet give a place to thought; which means that it still exists in
complete independence of the most remarkable phenomenon
exposed by nature to our observation. (V.P., pp. 161-2.)
The three characteristics which make the human indivi-
dual a truly unique object in the eyes of Science, once we
have made up our minds to regard man not merely as a
chance arrival but as an integral element of the physical
world, are as follows :
a. An extreme physico-chemical complexity (particu-
larly apparent in the brain) which permits us to consider him
the most highly synthesized form of matter known to us in
the Universe;
b. Arising out of this, an extreme degree of organization
which makes him the most perfectly and deeply centred of
all cosmic particles within the field of our experience;
c. Finally, and correlative with the above, the high de-
gree of psychic development (reflection, thought) which
places him head and shoulders above all other conscious
beings known to us. (F.M., p. 87.)
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Let Me Explain
We must accept what science tells us, that man was born
from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who
lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is
to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world -
not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of
thought. Let us consider him, without reducing his stature,
as a phenomenon. (H.E., p. 20.)
To establish the value of this new viewpoint . . . my only
form of argument will be that universally employed by
modern science, that and that alone: by which I mean the
argument of 'coherence*. In a world whose single business
seems to be to organize itself in relation to itself, that is by
definition the more true, which better harmonizes in rela-
tion to ourselves a larger body of facts. (H.E., p. 94.)
II. THE NOTION OF COMPLEXITY
We will define the 'complexity' of a thing as the quality the
thing possesses of being composed -
a. of a larger number of elements, which are
b. more tighdy organized among themselves.
In this sense an atom is more complex than an electron, a
molecule more complex than an atom, and a living cell
more complex than the highest chemical nuclei of which it
is composed, the difference depending (on this I insist) not
only on the number and diversity of the elements included in
each case, but at least as much on the number and correla-
tive variety of the links formed between these elements. It is
not, therefore, a matter of simple multiplicity but of organ-
ized multiplicity; not simple complication but centred com-
plication.
This idea of complexity (more exacdy, centro-complexity)
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Phenomenology
is easily grasped. In a universe where science ends by analys-
ing everything and taking everything apart, it simply ex-
presses a characteristic proper to each kind of body, like its
mass, volume or any other dimension. . . .
The coefficient of complexity enables us to establish among
the natural units which it has helped us to 'identify' and iso-
late, a system of classification that is no less natural and uni-
versal. Let us try to depict this classification in schematic
form, as it might be drawn on a blackboard.
At the very bottom of the board we have the ninety-two
simple chemical elements (from hydrogen to uranium)
formed by groups of atomic nuclei together with their elec-
trons.
Above these come the molecules composed of groups of
atoms. These molecules, in the case of the carbon com-
pounds, may become enormous. In the albuminoids (or
proteins) there may be thousands of associated atoms: the
molecular weight of haemoglobin is 68,000.
Above these again come the mysterious viruses, strange
bodies producing a variety of maladies in animals and plants,
concerning which we do not yet know if they are monstrous
chemical molecules or living infra-bacteria. Their molecu-
lar weight runs into millions.
Higher still we come to the lowest cells. I do not know if
any attempt has yet been made to ascertain the atomic con-
tent of these (it must be billions) but they are undoubtedly
groups of proteins.
And finally we reach the world of higher living forms,
each composed of groups of cells. To take a very simple
instance, that of the plant duckweed; its content is estimated
to be 4 X io 20 atoms.
This scheme of classification, based essentially on the
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Let Me Explain
intimate structure of beings, is undeniably natural in
principle.
Moreover, when arranged according to our scale of com-
plexity, the elements succeed one another in the historical
order of their birth. The place in the scale occupied by each
corpuscle situates the element chronologically in the genesis
of the Universe, that is to say, in Time. It dates it.
Thus the rising scale conforms both to the ascending
movement towards higher consciousness and to the unfold-
ing of evolutionary time. Does not this suggest that, by
using the degree of complexity as a guide, we may advance
very much more surely than by following any other lead
as we seek to penetrate to the truth of the world and to
assess, in terms of absolute values, the relative importance,
the place, of all things? (F.M., pp. 105-7.)
III. A THIRD INFINITE, OR, THE INFINITELY COMPLEX
Physics has so far been built up from a consideration of a
single one of the world's axes: the axis that rises up, through
intermediate magnitudes (in which we are physically inclu-
ded), from the extremely small to the extremely large, from
the infinitesimal to the immense. Physics is still concerned
with only two infinites. Now, this is not enough. If I am,
scientifically, to cover the whole of my experience, I must
have in my mind and allow for in the Universe a further
'infinite', as real as the other two: by this I mean the infinite
of complexity. The bodies we see around us are not simply
small and large. They are also simple or complex.
Moreover, the distance (estimating it numerically - and
very approximately - simply by the number of elements
40
Phenomenology
combined) from the extreme of complexity in the particles
we know is just as astronomical as that between stellar and
atomic magnitudes. It is, therefore, in a strictly literal sense,
and by no means metaphorically, that we may speak in
science of a 'third infinite', which, starting from the infini-
tesimal, builds itself up in the immense to the level of the
median: and that, let me repeat, is the infinity of complexity.
When we introduce into our fundamental plan of the
Universe this axis of complexities, it is not simply the result
of trying to cover more explicidy and accurately a wider
section of the world of experience. The most interesting
consequence of the transformation we effect is that the
phenomena of life (consciousness, freedom, invention) are
thereby readily linked to the phenomena of matter. In other
words, biology is quite naturally incorporated into physics.
If in fact, as universal experience shows us, life represents a
controlled whole of properties that appear and develop as a
function of the increasing physico-chemical complexity of
organized material groups, then surely we must lay down a
further principle. It is one that is completely consonant with
another fact, now universally accepted, that every infinite is
characterized by certain effects that are strictly proper to it
alone. The principle I mean is that consciousness is the pecul-
iar and specific property of organized states of matter; it is
a property that is hardly perceptible, and therefore negligible,
when we are dealing with low values of complexity, but it
gradually makes itself felt and finally becomes dominant
when we reach high values. . . . On the one hand we have
physics, in the strict sense of the word, which is chiefly con-
cerned to bring out the statistical pattern of very simple ele-
ments (which accordingly enjoy an infinitely small degree
of life) : taking these elements in very large numbers, from
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Let Me Explain
the infinitesimal to the immense. On the other hand, we have
biology: it branches off in a different but allied direction
from physics and confines itself to the median, studying the
behaviour and association of particles that are extremely
complex and therefore appreciably interiorized, each particle
being capable of being treated in isolation. Thus these two
sciences, the science of matter and the science of life, are not
opposed but complementary to one another. (Comment je
vois, 1948, paras. 1-2.)
IV. a law of recurrence: the law of
COMPLEXITY-CONSCIOUSNESS
However wide the distinction in nature we still, for philo-
sophical reasons, think it necessary to draw between life
and matter, there comes to light in the order of phenomena
a law of recurrence which is found by experience to link
together the appearance of the two. (F.M., p. 107.)
Everyone has known from the beginning that organized
matter is endowed with spontaneity in combination with
psychic inwardness. Everyone also knows today that this
organic matter is amazingly complicated. Why, in the light
of the great discoveries of modern physics, should we not
state quite simply that two and two make four? In other
words, transforming the problem into a solution, why not
say this: 'Absolutely inert and totally brute matter does not
exist. Every element of the Universe contains, at least to an
infinitesimal degree, some germ of inwardness and spontan-
eity, that is to say of consciousness. In extremely simple and
extremely numerous corpuscles (which only manifest them-
selves by their statistical effects) this property remains im-
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Phenomenology
perceptible to us, as if it did not exist. On the other hand its
importance grows with its complexity - or, which comes to
the same thing, with the degree of "centration" of the cor-
puscles on themselves. From an atomic complexity of the
order of millions (virus) onwards, it begins to come into our
experience. In the higher reaches it shows itself in successive
leaps (in a series of psychic "quanta"). Finally in man, after
the critical point of "reflection", it takes the form of thought
and thereafter becomes dominant. Just as in the infinitely
small, great numbers explain the determinism of physical
laws; and just as in immensity, the curvature of space ex-
plains the forces of gravity, so, in the third infinity, complex-
ity (and the "centredness" resulting from it) gives rise to the
phenomena of freedom/
Thus everything in the universe around us surely becomes
clearer.
And the stars? you will ask. And the galaxies? You have
said nothing about them. What place do they have in this
story?
Despite their corpuscular appearance, the stars certainly
do not form a natural prolongation of the line of atoms.
This, as we have just seen, culminates in life in the middle
zone of the world. The stars, on the other hand, repeat this
line symmetrically on the side of the very great. The stars,
one might say, are the laboratories, the place of generation,
the 'matrix' of atoms. The larger a stai is, the simpler is its
constitution. Inversely, the smaller and colder (up to a cer-
tain optimum) a sidereal body is, the larger the range of its
elements grows, and the more these elements build up into
complex edifices. Such is the case of the earth, the only known
star on which we can follow the higher phases of this de-
velopment. From this point of view the appearance of life
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Let Me Explain
takes the form of a conjoint effect of 'galactic gas' and 'elec-
tronic gas', reacting on one another in the middle dimensions.
(V.P., pp. 225-6.)
Life is apparently nothing but the privileged exaggera-
tion of a fundamental cosmic tendency (as fundamental as
entropy or gravitation) which may be called the 'Law of
complexity-consciousness', and which can be expressed as
follows:
'Left long enough to itself, under the prolonged and uni-
versal play of chance, matter manifests the property of
arranging itself in more and more complex groupings, and
at the same time in ever-deepening layers of consciousness;
this double and combined movement of physical infolding
and psychic interiorization once started, continuing, acceler-
ating, and growing to its utmost extent.' (A.M., p. 139.)
v. consequences: man s place in the
UNIVERSE
In science (and elsewhere) the great test of truth is coherence
and fruitfulness. For our minds, the more order a theory
imposes on our vision of the world, and, at the same time,
the more capable it shows itself of directing and sustaining
the forward movement of our powers of research and con-
struction, the more certain that theory is. (True theory =
the most profitable.)
With this understanding, let us take up our position (at
least provisionally and hypothetically) in the universe with
three infinites which I have just postulated. Let us act as if
this universe were the true one, and try to see what takes
place.
A long series of corollaries immediately appears: and the
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Phenomenology
closely linked chain of them leads us much further than you
would think towards the harmonization of our knowledge
and the guiding of our actions.
a. The significance of consciousness
In the first place a natural connection is drawn between the
two worlds of physics and psychology, hitherto supposed
irreconcilable. Matter and consciousness are bound together:
not in the sense that consciousness becomes directly measur-
able, but in the sense that it becomes organically and physi-
cally rooted in the same cosmic process with which physics
is concerned. 1
In the second place, and by the same fact, the appearance
of consciousness ceases to be a chance, strange, aberrant,
fortuitous occurrence in the universe. It becomes on the
contrary a regular and general phenomenon connected with
the global drift of cosmic matter towards increasingly high
molecular groupings. Life appears wherever it becomes pos-
sible in the universe.
In the third place, the phenomenon 'consciousness', by
the very fact that it is recognized to be general, tends to
present itself as essential and fundamental. Not only a physi-
cal phenomenon, but the phenomenon. We have already
known for some years that towards the bottom matter tends
to vanish by disaggregation of atomic nuclei. And here is
life, showing itself as symmetrically the exactly opposite
process : a corpuscular aggregation. On the one hand, a fall of
great numbers towards states of greatest probability. On the
other a persistent, incredible but undeniable rise towards the
smallest numbers by way of improbability. The movements
1 The reference is to the law of recurrence examined above.
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Let Me Explain
are of the same universal vastness. But while the former
destroys, the latter constructs. Must it not then be this
latter rise of consciousness that represents the true course of
our universe through time: the very axis of cosmogenesis?
b. The significance of man
And hence (fourth corollary) the significance of man is
growing, and his place is becoming scientifically more pre-
cise.
On the curve of moleculization, as we have just drawn it,
man is clearly not the first in size. By the quantity of corpus-
cles assembled in his body (by his total number of mole-
cules) he clearly stands below the elephant or the whale.
But on the other hand, it is certainly in him, in the thousands
of millions of cells of his brain, that matter has now reached
its maximum of linked complication and centralized org-
anization. Chronologically and structurally, man is in-
dubitably in the field of our experience, the last formed, the
most highly complex and at the same time the most deeply
centred of all the 'molecules'.
There are still certain physicists who scoff at 'man's pre-
tensions to give himself an inexplicable superiority in the
world'. I am certain that a generation hence, the attitude
accepted by scientists will be that of Julian Huxley when he
declared that man is the highest, the richest, the most sig-
nificant object within range of our investigations, because it
is in him that cosmic evolution is culminating at this mo-
ment before our eyes, having become, by our reflection,
conscious of itself.
The old anthropocentrism was wrong in imagining man
to be the geometrical and necessary juridical centre of a sta-
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Phenomenology
tic universe. But its anticipations are verified in a manner at
once higher and more humble, now that man (who was once
believed to be engulfed in a universe immensely extended by
physics) justifiably reappears at the very forefront of the
wave of moleculization which carries the world forward.
Everything falls into place, everything takes shape, from
the lowest to the highest, in the present and the past of a
universe in which a generalized physics succeeds in embrac-
ing without confusing the phenomena of radiation and the
spiritual phenomenon. Coherence.
And, in addition, everything is illumined (though in a
diffuse manner, as is right) in the direction of the future.
Fruitfulness.
c. Fruitfulness for human action
I wish to insist on this decisive point before concluding.
One evident characteristic of the curve of moleculization,
as drawn, is that it is not closed, not stopped. At present it
ends with man. But dare we think that it can and should ex-
tend further? And how? Man is momentarily a climax in the
universe; and a leading shoot also, to the extent that by his
intense psychism he confirms the reality and fixes the direc-
tion of a rise of consciousness through things. But may he
not also be the bud from which something more compli-
cated and more centred than man himself is to emerge?
In man, up to now, we have only considered the individual
edifice; the body with its thousand billion cells, and above all
the brain, with its thousand millions of nervous nuclei. But
while man is an individual centred in himself (that is to say a
'person') does he not at the same time stand as an element
in relation to some new and higher synthesis ? We know atoms
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Let Me Explain
as sums of nuclei and electrons; molecules as sums of atoms;
cells as collections of molecules. Could there not be, in
formation ahead of us, a humanity which will be the sum of
organized persons? And is not this, moreover, the only
logical manner of extending, by recurrence (in the direction of
greater centred complexity and greater consciousness), the
curve of universal moleculization?
Here is the idea, long dreamt of by sociology, reappearing
today, this time with a scientific foundation, in the books of
professional scientists (Haldane, Huxley, Sherrington and so
many others). Fantastic, you may think. But must not every-
thing be fantastic if it is not to be false, in the direction of the
three infinites? (V.P., pp. 227-9.)
VI. SUMMARY
A certain law of recurrence, underlying and dominating
all experience, forces itself on our attention. It is the law of
complexity-consciousness, by which, within life, the stuff
of the cosmos folds in upon itself continually more closely,
following a process of organization whose measure is a
corresponding increase of tension (or psychic t°).
In the field of our observation, reflective man represents
the highest term attained by an element in this process of
organization.
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