Teilhard de Chardin: La recherche comme quête mystique

Abstract

To associate scientific research with mysticism seems to be a contradiction. The first entails activity, commitment, transformation of the world, objective knowledge. The second is usually associated with passivity, contemplation, withdrawal for the world. But for Teilhard there is a deep resonance between both concepts. To understand this, it is necessary to begin with the fact that Teilhard is a researcher, a person who realized that the truth needs to be searched. We can never say that we hold it. Truth is not an object to be grasped. It stands before us. The quest of the truth never ends. For him the research (“the sacred fire of Research”) is the highest human activity because it reveals the deepest fuel that inflames all human commitments. In an evolutionary world life is a never-ending process. Nature is equivalent of becoming. Nothing is yet achieved, be it physical, biological or human. Humanity bears the responsibility to pursue the movement of evolution. Moreover, in the research process we become aware that the goal is not made of individual truths put one beside the other. The goal is global, not the result of an analysis but of a synthesis. The intuition precedes the vision and guides it. Every element of the world is a microcosm, because it is associated with the other in the great web of the world. Teilhard is critical of a scientific research practices by specialists and conceived only in terms of an analysis that risks breaking the unity of reality. In conclusion, even if science is not as such a mystical quest, the person who practices it can become aware that he or she is guided by a mystical intuition that helps him or her to go further in the endless pursuit of the truth.