The same volume I published an essay on Scientific Humanism (a close approximation to P£re Teilhard’s Neo-Humanism) f in which I independently anticipated the tide of Pere Teilhard’s great book by describing humanity as a phenomenon, to be studied and analysed by scientific methods. Soon after the first World War, in Essays of a Biologist, I made my first attempt at defining and evaluating evolutionary progress.

In my Romanes Lecture on Evolutionary Ethics, I made an attempt (which I now see was inadequate, but was at least a step in the right direction) to relate the development of moral codes and religions to the general trends of evolution ; in 1942, in my Evolution^ the Modern Synthesis, I essayed the first compre- hensive post-Mendelian analysis of biological evolution as a process : and just before meeting Pere Teilhard had written a pamphlet entitled Unesco : its Purpose and Philosophy, where I stressed that such a philosophy must be a global, scientific and evolutionary humanism. In this, I was searching to establish an ideological basis for man s further cultural evolution, and to define the position of the individual human personality in the process — a search in which I was later much aided by P£re Teilhard’s writings, and by our conversations and correspondence.

The Phenomenon of Man is certainly the most important of Pire Teilhard’s published works. Of the rest, some, including the essays in La Vision du Passi, reveal earlier developments or later elaborations of his general thought ; while others, like V Apparition de l % Homme, are rather more technical

Pire Teilhard starts from the position that mankind in its totality is a phenomenon to be described and analysed like any other phenomenon : it and all its manifestations, including human history and human values, are proper objects for scientific study.

His second and perhaps most fundamental point is the absolute necessity of adopting an evolutionary point of view. Though for certain limited purposes it may be useful to think of phenomena as isolated statically in time, they are in point of fact never static : they are always processes or parts of processes.

Pierre Teilhard de Chakdin (1881-1955) was born in France and ordained a Jesuit priest in 1911. Trained as a paleontologist, Teilhard did research at Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and fieldwork in China, where in 1929 he codiscovered the celebrated “Peking Man” fossils. In his writings, he sought to reconcile his spiritual and scientific beliefs, producing a vision of man as evolving toward the divine. His unorthodox theological positions were at odds with Catholic doctrine and led to a strained relationship with Jesuit leaders, who forbade him from publishing his writings. The Phenomenon of Man became a bestseller when it was posthumously published in France in 1955.

Sir Julian Huxley (1887-1975) was one of the twentieth century’s leading evolutionary biologists. Among his numerous distinctions, Huxley was the first director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and cofounder of the World Wildlife Fund.