ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

Janauary 10, 2003

Our duty is to proceed as if limits to our ability do not exist. We are collaborators in creation.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1881 - 1955

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and paleontologist, wrote primarily on the phenomenon of man and the future of the world. At an early point in his career this paleontologist and Jesuit priest made it his personal mission to reconstruct science from the perspectives of faith. He would do this by overthrowing all the barriers that had been erected between science and religion in the past one hundred years. After working in China on the discovery of Peking Man's skull, he developed his belief that evolution is an incomplete process. He has become known for his theory that man is evolving, mentally and socially, toward a final spiritual unity.

Teilhard was born and reared in an eighteenth-century manor house located in the barony of Sarcenat near the provincial capital, Auyergne, France. Growing up in a family of eleven children, Teilhard was reared in an atmosphere of discipline and devotion. In this highly structured family setting, Teilhard learned from his father, Emmanuel Teilhard de Chardin, the love of nature and natural history which later became so important to his spiritual life as well as to his science. Teilhard's life spins itself around these two poles of thought and feeling: his sense of fascination and wonder about the natural world and his sense of faith welling up from within the world.

Wishing you great and continued success!

Sincerely,