Customer Reviews

The Jesuit and the Skull

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4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Smoothly and informatively written, Amir Aczel traces the career of Teilhard de Chardin both as an academic and as a Jesuit priest. His difficulties with the Church are described but primarily at a superficial level. It is a major puzzle as to why Teilhard remained a Jesuit priest given his philosophy, the way the Church mistreated him and his complex relationships with Lucile Swan. Nor do we really get an insight into how Teilhard could reconcile his philosophy with the basic tenets of the Catholic Church, his practices as a priest and his vows of celibacy. Aczel recognizes these conundrums but he and we do not get close to any answers. Aczel spends a lot of time laying out Teilhard's friendship with Lucile, but little time detailing either Teilhard's specific scientific contributions or his actual philosophy beyond the omega point.
The book revived my interest in Teilhard but without providing much by way of an explanation of this complex and talented scientist, priest and man.

I have always been fascinated by Teihard de Chardin. Pere Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest, geologist, palaeontologist, theologian, scholar and Christian mystic. This book is about him and the circumstances surrounding his discovery of the Peking man.

Teihard de Chardin fascinates me because he tried very hard to reconcile science and religion. He felt a calling to the Church and joined the Jesuits or Society of Jesus at a very young age. In spite of his all conflicts and heartache with the Jesuits, he never did consider leaving the order. During his training as a priest, he spent 4 years as a stretcher bearer during the First World War. The horrors and inhumanity of war had a profound effect on him. He was ordained a Jesuit. Aside from a theological education, he also studied the science of geology and palaeontology. He received his PhD when he was 45 years old.

Unlike many Christians, Teihard de Chardin did not find any conflicts between his belief in his Christian faith and science. He sees a convergence of both. His main thesis is that God is a God of change and all creation is in a constant flux of change until it all reaches a point of union with the One which he called the Omega Point. This means that human beings are also changing as we evolve to a higher level of consciousness. What this also means is that he embrace the theory of evolution as a theory of change. Not only do animals change or evolve but the earth itself evolves. This brings him to consider these changes as the evolution of the Noosphere.

His acceptance and teaching of the theory of evolution came to the attention of the Jesuits and the Vatican. Teihard de Chardin was commanded to stop his teaching. However he was such an established scientist that the Church decided to send him as far away from civilisation as possible. They decided to send him to China! It is the greatest of irony that in China, Teihard de Chardin discovered the remains of the Peking man. The Peking man is considered scientific proof that human beings have evolved from earlier hominids. All these support evolution and are against creationism. Thus in sending him away to China, Teihard de Chardin was sent to a place to discover something the Church has wanted to avoid.

Teihard de Chardin was censored by his order and not allowed to lecture and publish. Most of his books and writings are published after his death.

An interesting and informative introduction to Teihard de Chardin, evolution and the Peking man.

In his very readable The Jesuit and the Skull, Amir Aczel offers a rather sweeping account of the early and mid-twentieth century search for the "missing link," focusing in particular on the contributions of the French cleric and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In the process he discusses the history of paleoanthropology, the Scopes trial, disagreements in the scientific community over the significance of the Java Man and Peking Man fossils, and the Galileo-like struggle between de Chardin and Church authorities.

The two undisputed stars of Aczel's account are de Chardin and Peking Man. In a curious manner, both suffered similar fates and similar resurrections. Both were "silenced," buried under layers of nearly impenetrable sediment, literally in Peking Man's case and metaphorically in de Chardin's when he was silenced and exiled by the Church. But both also came to light: Peking Man in 1929 when he was discovered in a cave near Beijing, and de Chardin posthumously with the publication of the thousands of pages he wrote but couldn't publish during his lifetime.

Aczel's account of this chapter in the tussle between religion and science is certainly timely, and it provides a good overview of the topic. I wish, though, that he'd taken more care to explain de Chardin's unique understanding of the convergence of Christian faith and evolutionary theory. This would've made the Church's opposition more clear. Aczel focuses especially on an early essay of de Chardin's that calls the original sin doctrine into question. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of what ecclesial authorities saw as problematic in his position. Much of the book's details about the relationship between Lucile Swan and de Chardin could've been omitted to make room for this kind of discussion.

Still, well worth reading. Three and a half stars.

From its description, this book appeared to have a lot of elements in which I am interested, and the beginning of the book was absolutely riveting. Unfortunately, as I continued reading, the message and story got a bit repetitive and dull.

Set in the early- to mid- 1900's, the book follows the life of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and paleontologist who was part of the research team that discovered the famous "Peking Man". While the mechanics of the story regarding the search for fossils was of some interest, the inner struggle of Teilhard to reconcile evolution with the teachings of the Catholic Church at the time was riveting, at least in the beginning portion of the book.

Unfortunately, at about 50% of the way through the book, the drama just got repetitive. And I can't help but wonder how much of the trouble he had with the Church was related to his concept of the `noosphere' and how much was actually due to his stance on evolution. All in all, it's worth a read if you are interested in the material, but the book loses steam about half way through.

This is my first experience reading Amir D. Aczel, and I find his style most attractive: he has told a story well and he has summarized some difficult concepts well. His account of Teilhard de Chardin required of him to explain/summarize parts of geology, paleontology, carbon dating, anthropology and some other scientific disciplines, and he has done this well while telling the fascinating story of a Jesuit priest who felt he was able to synthesize both science and religion. His account leaves me wanting to go out and read all I can of the writings of Teilhard (I feel science and religion need not be in conflict), and also to try to keep up on the latest discoveries in paleontology. The story he recounts also conveys the excitement scientists feel in putting the pieces of the fossil puzzle together, and the key role of evolution in helping them to do that.

In the course of telling this story, he makes the point that Teilhard's greatness rests in part on his belief that he could reconcile religion and science. Unfortunately, he fell into disfavor with the Vatican and with the Jesuit Order in attempting to articulate this synthesis. My disappointment with Aczel's book is that he did not go into that controversy and explain either the synthesis or the real differences/issues: what is original sin, where did Teilhard's view diverge from the Catholic view, was this a misunderstanding or is there actually substantial matter over which they disagreed? Instead, he settles for the somewhat trite characterization of "the brilliant revolutionary thinker vs. the static atavistic establishment" as a way to explain the controversy. What a missed opportunity!

There are two sides of this issue, and it would have been illuminating to present both and let the reader decide which he/she preferred. It would also have been fascinating to see the actual essentials of Teilhard's synthesis of religion and science. For example, I suspect that most evolutionary biologists would find Teilhard's insertion of a divine driving force into the mechanism of evolution to be just as 'heretical' to evolutionary theory as the Catholic Church found his treatment of original sin. But we are left in the dark about the vision and the content of theological discussion.

Perhaps Mr. Aczel did not feel competent in dealing with theological issues. He does say parenthetically that Catholicism teaches that "sex is only for procreation," [p. 190]which is wrong - the classic teaching is that sex has both unitive and procreative dimensions. And original sin is really a fascinating topic, as it attempts to show how moral evil can enter the world created by a God who is all good - a timeless issue. In any case, I wish that he had read the critique of Teilhard's works that he describes in the Prologue, then sought help in understanding both sides of the issue, so that he could have presented them to us, rather than fall back on the much easier explanation insinuated by comparing Teilhard's plight with Galileo's. This is neither helpful nor illuminating to understanding the issues at stake. Nor does it help us who would like to take a stab at our own synthesis of religion and science.

I can't praise this book enough. I have read a number of books by Amir Aczel over the years, but this is clearly one of his very best! In my view, it's definitely six-star material. This is an absolutely gripping account of anthropology and the theory of evolution as these subjects were being developed over the last century and a half or so, with the life and work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as the main focus. Because he was a Jesuit priest as well as a world class scientist, Teilhard's contemporary views about evolution caused him serious problems with the church - an issue also superbly covered in this book. Sprinkled with mini-biographies of various key individuals, this wonderful work has everything from high adventure and thrilling scientific discovery to tragic drama and even an unexpected love story. As is the norm for this author, the writing style is clear, friendly, absorbing, very accessible and incredibly engaging; I could not put the book down. This is a masterpiece that should appeal to absolutely anyone.

Amir Aczel has, in "The Jesuit and the Skull," tackled a very interesting subject. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has been criticized by both the Catholic Church (and even today some of the documents associated with Teilhard were not available to Aczel) and scientists, who scoffed at his Omega Man idea of progress. Accused after his death by Stephan Jay Gould of taking part in the Piltdown hoax and hounded in his life by the very order (the Jesuits) that he joined and to which he remained loyal, Teilhard was also (as noted by Axzel) an outstanding paleontologist.

Aczel has written the history of Teilhard's personal life and association with his church, which were both often stormy, and his close scientific association with Peking Man and other paleoanthropological finds, where he performed very admirably. He was a researcher so well known in his time for his excellent paleontological work that he could get invited to take part in Roy Chapman Andrews' expedition to Mongolia. Still he was more or less banished to China by the church (fortunately for students of early man as he did his most brilliant work there!) and he struggled to have a close, but chased, relationship with a woman (Lucile Swan) who obviously loved him deeply and wanted more.

In essence Teilhard was an enigma and for the most part Aczel catches this in his popular biographical book. However he really does not explore several aspects of Teilhard's ideas and you are left with a lack of detail on his association with Dawson and the Piltdown hoax. While I agree with him that Teilhard was unlikely to be involved in the hoax, it does sort of leave the reader hanging to dismiss this in just a few sentences. Teilhard's problems with original sin are understandable because of his evolutionary views so I am not sure what the author could have added in that regard, but still there is a sort of incompleteness about this book that left me a tad unsatisfied. However, on the whole I recommend this book for a easy to read overview of the problems of both paleontological studies of early man and the Catholic Church's reaction to the elimination of a literal view of Genesis based in part on the scholarship of one of their own.

Like other reviewers, I found this book to be a most interesting read, and an engaging one too, from beginning to end.

Aczel recounts the "East-side Story" in the early days of the 20th century paleoanthropology and centers it around Teilhard de Chardin. Numerous historical figures are present in this story, including Davidson Black, Pei WenZhong, Franz Weidenreich, Lucile Swan, Johan Andersson, and even nobility from Europe to Mongolia, just to name a few.

And as an added bonus, Aczel presents a summary chapter at the end of the book, titled "What Really Happened to Peking Man?". This I found most absorbing yet at the same time also most inconclusive. But this is a mystery after all, and it will likely remain one for some foreseeable years.

Highly recommend!

Aczel is a master craftsman and author who describes things in prose as if you might be there. I have read each of his books and recommend them all.

'The Jesuit & The Skull cogently and saliently prvides well documented discourse of how the FOOLS Across The Tiber(Vatican's Curia) operate to this very day, and is 100% correct.

This latest offering Aczel is a MUST READ!

I'm not a priest, palentologist, or scientist but I still loved this book. Makes me want to read more about both men (Pierre and the Peking man).