The whole life lies in the verb seeing.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that humanity poses the greatest mysteries to science, more so than any other entity or phenomenon.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin highlights the complexity and enigma of human existence from a scientific perspective. He implies that while science seeks to understand various phenomena, the nature of humanity remains uniquely challenging and puzzling, thus emphasizing the limitations of positivist viewpoints in fully grasping what makes us human.
Themes
HumanityMysterySciencePositivismPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the limits of scientific understanding at a university lecture.
More from Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
All quotes βReligion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.
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We may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world.
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Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me - I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
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