This is an overly convoluted work that tries to take theology and evolution and combine them in a philosophy that sees man continuing to develop into a union with the universe. It's much more sophisticated than anything like "Intelligent Design," and yet it relies too much on logical conjecture rather than science. ( )

I love this.

from a review by Arnold Toynbee: "This is a great book. Its subject is the sum of things: nothing less than God and the universe. Teilhard sees and presents the universe in evolution, but at the same time a unity. His vision of unity meets a spiritual need of our time."

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE: BEFORE LIFE CAME
I. The Stuff of the Universe: Elemental Matter (Plurality, Unity, Energy); Total Matter (The System, The Totum, The Quantum); The Evolution of Matter (The Appearance, The Numerical Laws)
II. The Within of Things: Existence; The Qualitative Laws of Growth; Spiritual Energy
III. The Earth in its Early Stages: The Without (The Crystallising World, The Polymerising World)/ The Within

BOOK TWO: LIFE
I. The Advent of Life: The Transit to Life (Micro-organisms and Mega-molecules, A Forgotten Era, The Cellular Revolution); The Initial Manifestations of Life (The Milieu, Smallness and Number, The Origin of Number, Inter-relationship and Shape); The Season of Life
II. The Expansion of Life: The Elemental Movements of Life (Reproduction, Multiplication, Renovation, Conjugation, Association, Controlled Additivity); A Corollary, The Ways of Life (The Ramifications of the Living Mass, The Tree of Life)
III. Demeter (Ariadne's Thread, The Rise of Consciousness, The Approach of Time)

BOOK THREE: THOUGHT
I. The Birth of Thought: The Threshold of Reflection (The Threshold of the Element, the Hominisation of the Individual; The Threshold of the Phylum, the Hominisation of the Species; The Threshold of the Terrestrial Planet, The Noosphere); The Original Forum
II. The Deployment of the Noosphere: The Ramifying Phase of the Pre-Hominids; The Group of the Neanderthaloids; The Homo Sapiens Comples; The Neolitiic Metamorphosis; The Prolongations of the Neolithic Age and the Rise of the West
III. The Modern Earth: The discovery of Evolution (The Perception of Space-time, The Envelopment in Duration, The Illumination); The Problem of Action (Modern Disquiet, The Requirements of the Future, The Dilemma and the Choice)

BOOK FOUR: SURVIVAL
I. The Collective Issue: The Confluence of Thought (Forced Coalescence, Mega-Synthesis); The Spirit of the Earth (Mankind, Science, Unanimity)
II. Beyond the Collective, the Hyper-Personal: The Convergence of the Person and the Omega Point (The Personal Universe, The Personalising Universe); Love as Energy; The Attributes of the Omega Point
III. The Ultimate Earth: Prognostics to be Set Aside; The Approaches (The Organisation of Research, The Discovery of the Human Object, the Conjunction of Science and Religion); The Ultimate

Epilogue: The Christian Phenomenon (Axes of Belief, Existence-Value, Power of Growth)

PostScript: The Essence of the Phenomenon of Man (A World in Involution, The First Appearance of Man, The Social Phenomenon)

Appendix: Some remarks on the place and part of Evil in a World of Evolution

de Chardin is going to be proven right in the next few years. His idea of human conciousness becoming the "noosphere" or the thought sphere of earth by combining and filling the earth is being talked and written about right now by very serious people. ( )