---
slug: paper-teilhard-de-chardin-p-1955-the-phenomenon-of-man-le-ph-nom-ne-humain
title: Teilhard de Chardin: The Phenomenon of Man
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-teilhard-de-chardin-p-1955-the-phenomenon-of-man-le-ph-nom-ne-humain
---

## What the work establishes
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote The Phenomenon of Man in the 1930s. It presents evolution as a single process of cosmogenesis. Matter increases in complexity. Complexity produces interiority. Interiority becomes consciousness. The process continues through life into reflective thought.

The work describes three stages. Prelife builds atomic and molecular structures. Life forms the biosphere. Thought forms the noosphere. The noosphere is the thinking envelope around Earth. Humanity drives further convergence.

## Core results
Teilhard identified a directional law. Greater material complexity correlates with greater consciousness. He called this the law of complexity-consciousness. Evolution shows orthogenesis. It moves toward a final point of unification. He named that point Omega.

The reader stands inside the process. Human reflection continues the same energy flow that began with matter. The noosphere grows through communication and collective thought.

## Exact primary passages
The Phenomenon of Man states: "The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world." This appears in the introduction.

Another passage reads: "Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself. The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself." This occurs in the section on the threshold of reflection.

Teilhard writes of the noosphere: the new membrane is "the collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which all are immersed."

He defines the law directly: full consciousness is "the specific effect of organised complexity."

## Convergence patterns touched
The work evidences convergence. Separate lines of evolution meet and intensify. Branching leads to higher integration. Complexity produces bounded structures. Memory accumulates in nervous systems. Scale invariance appears across levels from atom to society. The noosphere shows flow networks of thought.

## Relation to the OIP/GRAIN synthesis
The book supports the grain of the universe. Reliable energy flows produce repeated structural patterns. The Ladder from difference to flow to structure to memory to life to mind matches Teilhard's sequence. The Mirror Layer fits. The observer participates in the observed system through the noosphere.

OIP objects align with work objects in evolutionary stages. Invocation corresponds to the activation of complexity at each threshold. Receipts track the ledger of increasing organization. The synthesis lens applies without altering Teilhard's own statements.

See /a/oip-the-ladder for the sequence of stages. See /a/oip-principles for object rules. See /a/oip-the-mirror-layer for the position of the reader.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges
Teilhard's claims remain speculative. No empirical test isolates the law of complexity-consciousness as a measurable physical force. Critics note teleological assumptions. The Omega Point rests on interpretive synthesis rather than observation.

Reductionist accounts treat consciousness as an epiphenomenon without directional drive. The work offers no falsifiable prediction for future stages. Primary sources stay within philosophical and theological bounds.

The text was written before modern genetics and information theory. Later data on contingency in evolution challenges strict orthogenesis. Limits stay explicit in the original presentation.
