Hello everyone,

We now find ourselves at Section 4 of Chapter II of Part III of 'The
Human Phenomenon'. In this section, Teilhard discusses the
Neolithic age, also known as the New Stone age. Much of this
discussion references what he regards as the changes or
metamorphoses, associated with the Neolithic interval, which
contributed to the development of the noosphere. If we look
at Figure 4 of the present chapter we will see that, for him,
writing around 1940, the Neolithic age extended from a little
earlier than 10,000 years ago up to the Modern age.

Why does Teilhard envisage the Neolithic age as extending right
up into the twentieth century? My guess is as follows. In his eyes,
this age is to be viewed as mainly one of settled agricultural life.
And, certainly, at the time when 'The Human Phenomenon' was
being written some seventy years ago, the majority of the world's
population was still occupied with settled agricultural pursuits. [1]
To be sure, the Modern age was, by then, also well into its
development after centuries of slow growth. Nonetheless the
Neolithic ways of earning a living were still present to a not
insignificant degree.

In a 1923 essay the Jesuit thinker expresses the view that the
Neolithic age did not come to its close until the twentieth century
when he writes:

'The Neolithic age, which is hardly over,
is succeeded all around us, at this
moment, by the age of industry, the
age of Internationals, and at the same
time, to a marked degree, the age of
strikes and revolutions.' [2]

Teilhard's position would seem to be that our time in history is
witnessing the supersession of the Neolithic age by a novel
age which includes such ingredients as large scale industry,
international corporations, organized work stoppages and
revolutionary ideologies. Nonetheless, as he sees it, there
still remain, in our midst, significant vestiges of the Neolithic
way of life in which these ingredients are largely absent.

In the estimation of the Jesuit scientist, the Neolithic age has
been one in which socialization has come to the fore. By the
term "socialization" he means a drawing together, in a
cooperative way, of the members of a zoological group for
the purpose of enhancing the chances of group survival and
promoting the achievement of group betterment. In this
connection, earlier on in 'The Human Phenomenon', we find
him suggesting that 'the profound tendency toward socialization'
presents itself as the 'ultimate method employed by the living
group for augmenting by coherence its resistance to destruction
and its power of conquest'. [3] By the phrase "power of
conquest", I think he means the ability to overcome obstacles
enroute to a more evolved way of life, that is to say, a way of
life manifesting increased complexity and greater
consciousness.

In his opinion, socialization, the converging of living beings into
coherent wholes, tends to be, in evolutionary terms, 'an
achievement of maturity' [4], that is to say, an accomplishment
which occurs later, as opposed to early, in the evolution of a
zoological grouping. This being the case, it is no surprise that
he envisions human socialization achieving greater prominence
in the later Neolithic age than in the earlier Paleolithic age. This
is not to say that there was an absence of socialization during
pre-Neolithic times. Quite the contrary was the case, and he
acknowledges this when he remarks:

'As far back as we catch sight of our
great ancestors, they appear in
groups and around a fire.' [5]

For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings, he is telling
us, had socialized, in small groups, around their enkindled
hearths planning and strategizing for their survival and
betterment.

Teilhard is proposing that the small scale human socializing of
humankind's hunter gatherer era was replaced, during
Neolithic times, by human socialization on a much lager scale.

This concludes part 1. Please proceed to part 2.

Notes:

[1] Researchers (Dr. Ron Wimberley, a Professor of Sociology
at North Carolina State University, Dr. Libby Morris, director of
the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia,
and Dr. Gregory Fulkerson, a sociologist at North Carolina
State University), working in collaboration with the United
Nations, have estimated that it was not until May, 2007 that
urban dwellers, worldwide, began to outnumber rural dwellers.
See the news release provided by the North Carolina News
Service, at the following URL, for more details.
http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/2007/may/104.html

[2] 'Hominization', in Chapter IV of 'The Vision of the Past',
Trans. J. M. Cohen ((Collins, 1966), p. 76.

[3] 'The Human Phenomenon', Trans. Sarah Appleton Weber
(Sussex Academic Press, 2003), Part II, Chapter II,
Section 2, Subsection B, p. 72.

[4] 'Phenomenon' Part III, Chapter II, Section 4, p. 140.

[5] 'Phenomenon' Part III, Chapter II, Section 4, p. 140.


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