Free PDF

Author : Teilhard de Chardin Pierre
Title : The Vision of the Past
Year : 1967

Link download : Teilhard_de_Chardin_Pierre_-_The_Vision_of_the_Past.zip

HOW THE TRANSFORMIST QUESTION PRESENTS ITSELF TODAY. New truths are felt before they are e:x;pressed; and when they are e:x;pressed for the fust time they are inevitably couched in a defective form. Appearing at their birth like a gleam in the night, they strongly attract us. Y et we do not know in what precise direction or on what exact level this source ofbrilliance lies. For a long time we fumble, colliding with many dark objects and deceived by many reflections, before we join the light whose rays are guiding us forward. In order to make a fair judgement of transformist theories, we must remember that they have inevitably followed that law of progressive advance that governs the genesis of all new ideas. Though it is today indisputable that Lamarck, Darwin and their coundess disciples in the nineteenth century saw a true light shining ahead of them, it is no less evident to us that, in the attempts they made to capture it many of their efforts went astray. The fust generations of transformists were unable to define exacdy what was essentially new about their theory, and also what was stricdy biological in the unsuspected connections which they found within nature. They combined with their often masterly insights a great deal of defective explanation and false philosophy. Have we in the last years come a little nearer to the truth behind Lamarckism and Darwinism? Can we today separate better than our predecessors those aspects of the idea of biological evolution that righdy attract our minds from those that draw them dangerously towards a deceptive light? In what terms does the transformist problem present itself today ? ...