Dear friend,
[…] Outside of my specialty, I was able […] to visit the large cyclotrons at the University. […] I received the shock I was expecting. In front of these devices, we have the impression of losing our footing in the human being. Everything combines at this level : the laboratory, industry, war, and even, in some way, the highest of philosophies (I mean the search for a first or last element of things). And what about the enormity and complexity of the techniques and calculations gathered in these machines, – and also the population of engineers and physicists constantly stretched in the effort required to control the monsters… Another humanity that is born, by the natural force of things, – and that cries out (I feel it more and more keenly) towards and for a new God. Looking at these extraordinary products of the ” Noosphere “, I could not help thinking that tomorrow, without a doubt, it is means of this order that the new Biology will use to control Life. And it is undoubtedly in prolongation of the same movement of reorganization and general rethinking of the World by its base that will be constituted, finally, a science of the Man less ridiculous than the one of which one abounds us at the moment. […]
And very affectionately yours.
Teilhard
Pierre LEROY – Familiar letters of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, my friend, 1948-1955, Le Centurion, 1976, p. 151 and 152.
Extract proposed by Jean-Marie L’Honen.
You can send your proposals for correspondence to chantal.amouroux@teilhard.fr-. Thank you for your help.
www.teilhard.fr
