Re: Teilhard de Chardin - new documentary

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, 31 May 2024 22:05:49 +0000, *Hemidactylus*
<ecphoric@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
 

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:

Second posting attempt #4 after DG's note
 
On Thu, 30 May 2024 16:47:12 +0000, *Hemidactylus*
<ecphoric@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
 

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 27 May 2024 19:07:03 +0000, *Hemidactylus*
<ecphoric@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
 
[Mercy snip]
 

 
Going back to the OP I just watched this today:
https://www.pbs.org/video/teilhard-visionary-scientist-pt9dc1/ 
 
May not be available outside the US. Didn't delve much into a critical
assessment of Teilhard's views. Eugenics was of course absent from the
discussion.

 
Why would it be included when no substantive case has been offered?
The only "evidence" you have offered is an opinion post by John
Slattery who has no previous known qualifications or expertise to make
his views on Telhard of any significance.
 

Not quite. I provided that lengthy quote from *Phenomenon of Man* where
Teilhard addresses eugenics.

 
Sorry to prick your bubble but your anonymous interpretation of
Teilhard on Usenet does not amount to a substantive case for
organisations like PBS.
 
I'm genuinely curious here. You are generally a rational thinker yet
you don't seem bothered about the fact that you haven't found anybody
except Slattery to support your utter convincement about Teilhard's
support for racism and eugenics. Does that not give you pause for
thought?
 

I have gone directly to Teilhard's work itself and can via reason applied
to the evidence at hand come to the obvious conclusion that Teilhard was
incorporating eugenics into his evolutionary philosophy. I have no idea
what sorts of bias or predisposition are preventing you from acknowledging
the evidence and resulting conclusion. Slattery merely pointed the way. I
have my own copy of *Phenomenon of Man* and of *Activation of Energy* to go
by.

 
That paragraph is a mirror of some of the ones written by Ron Dean
about Darwin; your approach like his, is essentially 'Fuck the
experts, it's obvious to me so it must be right.'
 

We are not discussing Ron Dean, Paley, or Darwin here. You are lobbing red
herrings out of a tank. We are discussing multiple full quotes that
establish Teilhard was incorporating eugenics into his evolutionary
philosophy. You are playing silly evasive games.

There was a time when religious followers were instructed what to believe
by intermediaries. Then a new array of believers said they will read the
damn book themselves thank you very much. You are in the first camp.

And unlike Ron Dean I am not approaching this from novice ignorance.

>
I realise that you don't like being compared to him but it would help
if you would explain the difference in approach between you drawing
the conclusion about Teilhard being a racist and eugenicist contrary
to Teilhard experts and RD drawing the conclusion that Darwin was
driven by a desire to overturn Paley contrary to Darwin experts.
 

Teilhard was clearly incorporating eugenics into his progressive
evolutionary philosophy of human improvement just like the political
progressives that came before him. I am focused on the eugenics part, not
the racial part.

And I have said that Slattery may have gone too far in his interpretation
based somewhat on Joshua Canzona.

 

 

That wasn't substantive? And going on
Slattery's lead I found Teilhard's *Activation of Energy* collection
helpful. There's an essay called "The Sense of the Species in Man" where
Teilhard wrote:
 
"In animals, I recalled when I began, the sense of the species is
essentially a blind urge toward reproduction and multiplication, within the
phylum.
In man, by virtue of the two allied phenomena of reflection and social
totalization, the equivalent of this inner dynamism in a different context
can only be a reasoned urge towards fulfilment (both individual and
collective, each being produced through the other), followed in the
direction of the best arrangement of all the hominized substance which
makes up what I earlier called the noosphere.
The best arrangement with a view to a maximum hominization of the
noosphere."
 
"From this there follows, as a first priority, a fundamental concern to
ensure (by correct nutrition, by education, and by selection) an ever more
advanced eugenics of the human zoological type on the surface of the earth.
 
"At the same time, however, and even more markedly, there must be an ever
more intense effort directed towards discovery and vision, animated by the
hope of our gradually, as one man, putting our hands on the deep-seated
forces (physico-chemical, biological and psychic) which provide the impetus
of evolution."
 
"Finally, and at the same time, inasmuch as evolution is tending, quite
rightly, to be identified (at least so far as our field of vision extends)
with hominization,3 there must be a never-failing concern to stimulate,
within the personalized living mass, the development of the affective
energies which are the ultimate generators of union: a sublimated sense of
sex, and a generalized sense of man."
 
Endnote 3 is: ""In this sense, that in our more informed view man is no
longer simply the artisan but also the object of an auto-evolution, which
is seen to coincide, at its term, with a concerted reflection of all the
elementary human reflections, now mutually inter-reflective."
 
The above expands greatly on a quote Slattery had used in his Religion
Dispatches piece. Looks to me as Slattery himself opined that eugenics is
connected in some way to Teilhard's noosphere here.
 
Can you at least concede Teilhard was incorporating eugenics into his
thought when he was incorporating eugenics into his thought?

 
I see nothing supporting eugenics as described by the National Human
Genome Research Institute involving "the use of methods such as
involuntary sterilization, segregation and social exclusion [which]
would rid society of individuals deemed by them to be unfit"
 
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism
 
Does your idea of eugenics differ?
 

That is a very one-sided depiction of what eugenics meant.

 
Then write to the National Human Genome Research Institute and tell
them they have got it wrong too.
 

You are focusing on negative eugenics. That you are unaware of positive
eugenics betrays a lack of understanding on your part. You then use the
National Human Genome Research Institute as an intermediary to hide your
lack of understanding.

>
Alternatively, you could explain what your understanding of eugenics
is that you seek to apply to Teilhard.
 

You could admit Teilhard was using a eugenic approach.

 

I think
Slattery's polemics may have gotten in the way of assessing what Teilhard
was getting at with eugenics and you, ironically, are following him on
this.

 
Of course there is no possibility of you letting your own polemics get
in the way of rational analysis!
 

I provided multiple full quotes from Teilhard’s work and you ignore them.
Stop playing games.

 

 
Another essay "A Major Problem for Anthropology" had Teilhard saying:
 
"The time, then, seems to have come when a small number of men
representative of the principal living branches of modern scientific
thought (physics, chemistry, biochemistry, sociology, and psychology) must
come together in a concerted attack on the following points:"
 
"1. To affirm, and secure official recognition for, the proposition that
henceforth the question of an ultra-evolution of man (through collective
reflection or convergence) must be expressed in scientific terms."
 
"2. To seek in common for the best ways of verifying the existence of the
problem and tackling it scientifically, with all its consequences and on
every plane."
 
"3. To lay the foundations of a technics (both biophysical and
psychological) of ultra-evolution, from the twofold point of view:"
 
"a. both of the planetary arrangements that should be conceived (in general
research, for example, and in eugenics) with a view to an ultra-arrangement
of the noosphere"
 
"b. and of the psychic energies that must be generated or concentrated in
the light of a mankind which is in a state of collective super-reflection
upon itself: the whole problem, in fact, of the maintenance and development
of the psychic energy of self-evolution."
 
So again his noosphere idea had a eugenics component. Can you at least
concede that point?
 

 
See my reply above.
 

Eugenics is much more nuanced than the post-Nazi view of it allows in
popular thought. It was not confined to sterilization and euthanasia. As
the wiki says:
 
"Eugenic policies have been conceptually divided into two categories.[5]
Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the
genetically advantaged; for example, the reproduction of the intelligent,
the healthy, and the successful. Possible approaches include financial and
political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitro fertilization,
egg transplants, and cloning.[109] Negative eugenics aimed to eliminate,
through sterilization or segregation, those deemed physically, mentally, or
morally "undesirable". This includes abortions, sterilization, and other
methods of family planning.[109] Both positive and negative eugenics can be
coercive; in Nazi Germany, for example, abortion was illegal for women
deemed by the state to be fit.[110]"
 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#:~:text=Positive%20eugenics%20is%20aimed%20at,%2C%20egg%20transplants%2C%20and%20cloning.
 

Crickets.

>
Ernst Mayr was leaning toward positive eugenics in his letter to Crick:
"I have been favoring positive eugenics as far back as I can remember." and
"If I may summarize my own viewpoint, it is that positive eugenics is of
great importance for the future of mankind and that all roadblocks must be
removed that stand in the way of intensifying research in this area.
Shockley with his racist views is unfortunately the worst roadblock at this
time, at least in this country; hence, his sharp rejection by some of us
who are very much in favor of positive eugenics."
 
But this was very offputting on top of that support for eugenics by Mayr:
"As I get older, I find the objective as important as ever, but I
appreciate also increasingly how difficult it is to achieve this goal,
particularly in a democratic western society. Even if we could solve all
the biological problems, and they are formidable, there still remains the
problem of coping with the demand for "freedom of reproduction," a freedom
which fortunately will have to be abolished anyhow if we are not drown in
human bodies. The time will come, and perhaps sooner than we think, when
parents will have to take out a license to produce a child. No one seems to
question that it requires a license for such a harmless activity as driving
a car, and yet such an important activity as influencing the gene pool of
the next generation can be carried out unlicensed. A biologist will
understand the logic of this argument, but how many non-biologists would?"
 
https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101584582X183-doc
 
So given that range of meaning for eugenics I wonder what Teilhard meant by
the term.

 
I've elsewhere given you two examples which I believe would
comfortably fit in with Teilhard's idea of "a nobly human form of
eugenics … [that] …should be discovered and developed". I await your
response on them. (That is not a whinge about your lack of response so
far - I realise the 'wonkiness' of TO at the moment, this is my second
attempt to post this.)
 

You basically said then that you gave examples that fit with Teilhard’s use
of eugenics in his work. I take that on its face as admission to my point
on Teilhard incorporating eugenics in his worldview. So stop playing silly
games with all your spraying of squid ink to cloud the issue.

And you ignore the usage of positive eugenics by Ernst Mayr, an expert on
evolution.