Abstract
Although Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was thoroughly trained in philosophy and theology, he was first and foremost a paleoanthropologist, directly involved in the discovery of Homo erectus pekinensis (“Sinanthropus”) in China in the 1920s and 1930s. He came from a Catholic aristocratic background, was ordained a priest in 1911, survived World War I (as a stretcher-bearer, distinguished with the Legion of Honour), joined the Jesuit Order, conducted paleoanthropological field work during the interbellum, and became entangled in a conflict with his Jesuit superiors (over pantheism and the concept of original sin) until his death in New York (in exile more or less). When his writings were published (shortly after his death, as his superiors forbade publication during his lifetime), he quickly became an intellectual celebrity. Currently, he is credited with having anticipated Gaia theory (King, 2006), the global village concept (McLuhan, 1962), the Internet (Barlow, 1992; Cobb, 1998), the WWW (Garreau, 2005, p. 256; Greenfield, 2014, p. 9), transhumanism (Delio, 2014; Steinhart, 2008), the “global brain” (Stock, 1993), and the Anthropocene (e.g. Crutzen, 2002; Steffen et al., 2011).
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Philosophy of Engineering and Technology |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Chapter | 7 |
Pages | 207-227 |
Number of pages | 21 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Publication series
Series | Philosophy of Engineering and Technology |
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Volume | 38 |
ISSN | 1879-7202 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022, The Author(s).