Paleontologist and Roman Catholic priest. Born in Sarcenat, France, he entered the Jesuit order in 1899 and was ordained in 1912. He served as a stretcher bearer in World War I, during which was decorated for gallantry, and received his doctorate from the Sorbonne. Deeply interested in evolution theory, Teilhard sought to convince the church that it ought to embrace the implications of the revolution begun by Charles Darwin, which, he argued, did not entail a rejection of Christianity. He met with consistent opposition, however, from ecclesiastical superiors. Teilhard was expelled from his teaching position at the Catholic Institute in Paris in 1926 and was \u201cexiled\u201d to China. In China, he participated in research in geology and paleontology from 1926 to 1946 and was a discoverer of the fossilized \u201cPeking man.\u201d<\/p>\n
The evolution advocated by Teilhard described the basic stuff of the cosmos, living and nonliving, as continually undergoing irreversible changes in the direction of greater complexity of organization. To Teilhard, this \u201claw of complexification\u201d was as significant as the law of gravity and was illustrated by the vast array of organic forms that have appeared in the history of evolution, the most recent of which being humanity.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paleontologist and Roman Catholic priest. Born in Sarcenat, France, he entered the Jesuit order in 1899 and was ordained in 1912. He served as a stretcher bearer in World War I, during which was decorated for gallantry, and received his doctorate from the Sorbonne. Deeply interested in evolution theory, Teilhard sought to convince the church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-p"],"yoast_head":"\n