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Thoughts on the Phenomenon of Man

Here I Am. It was with this fact, said Professor Somerset, that he was becoming more and more intrigued, for in it was expressed man's consciousness and his ability to contemplate himself. Thus, it was not about general principles or abstractions that he wished to speak, but about a particular book, The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Chardin.

Professor Somerset said that this book forms a great imaginative vision of man. It is an attempt to place man in relation to the evolution of life on earth, and to ascertain his position and his future in the process of this evolution. The author envisages the whole knowable reality of man as a process of becoming, and not as a static situation. It was emphasised that thus conception of a process of becoming was taking increased importance; indeed,—and here Professor Somerset quoted from the look-"the universe in its entirety must be regarded as one gigantic process, a process of becoming, of attaining new levels of existence and organisation."

Professor Somerset then asked whether or not we were inclined to look on man as something outside this process, that, in fact, we had not yet escaped from the medieval idea of Man as being nothing but pieces in a kind of framework. Chardin, he said, came to the conclusion that since evolutionary phenomena are processes, they can never be evaluated or even adequately described solely in terms of their origins; they must be defined by their direction, their inherent possibilities, and their deductible future trends. He therefore coined two words; the first, "hominisation", denoted the process by which the original human stock was becoming more human; and the second, the 'noosphere", denoted the sphere of mind, as superimposed on the sphere of life, which acted as a transforming agency promoting "hominisation". It is, in other words, the sum-total of all that has been contributed to the world by the human mind.

In an analysis of evolution from the very beginnings Chardin finds two distinct tendencies, said Professor Somerset. Firstly, there is a centrifugal force which causes a wide number of variations, e.g. the five hundred thousand species of insects; and, secondly, there is a centripecal force causing convergance, or a turning in, among the higher vertegrates. This second tendency is basic to Chardin's conception of man, for it was at the point when man, a single species, evolved, that evolution had turned in on itself.

Professor Somerset went on to elaborate the idea of these two tendencies, saying that they are also expressed in human personality. On the one hand there is a tendency towards extreme individuation, for the genetic process which causes us never causes two alike beings. And yet there is a trend towards greater interrelation and communication between man and man. From this comes the kind of image that Chardin would like us to build up, he said-the image of the uniqueness of every person. Unique and yet necessary, for all people contribute to the noosphere, and therefore to hominisation.

His personal conception of religion was important in all this, Professor Somerset felt. He saw it as a unifying force which related him personally to both God and man, and enabled him to feel at home with both man and the Universe.

He said that the reading of this book was an intensely exciting experience, and to close quoted from the introduction by Sir Julian Huxley: "We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future and can realize more and more of them on condition that we increase our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me, is the distillation of The Phenomenon of Man."

Professor Somerset gave the talk at a S.C.M. meeting.