Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit, Catholic priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher, and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books. His mainstream scientific achievements included taking part in the discovery of Peking Man. His more speculative ideas, sometimes criticized as pseudoscientific, have included a vitalist conception of the Omega Point and the development along with Vladimir Vernadsky of the concept of a noosphere.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Sketch of "The Lately Discovered Peking Man" published in The Sphere
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1947)
Grave at the cemetery of the former Jesuit novitiate in Hyde Park, New York
The Omega Point is a theorized future event in which the entirety of the universe spirals toward a final point of unification. The term was invented by the French Jesuit Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from True God", and "through him all things were made". In the Book of Revelation, Christ describes himself three times as "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end". Several decades after Teilhard's death, the idea of the Omega Point was expanded upon in the writings of John David Garcia (1971), Paolo Soleri (1981), Frank Tipler (1994), and David Deutsch (1997).
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1947