Evolution, this brilliant scientist-Jesuit scholar tells us, is not just a Darwinian process based on "survival of the fittest" in which form tries out various shapes in its quest to master the costume of matter, but is simultaneously an interior process of the development of consciousness.

 

Over millennia, as molecules learned to aggregate, and cells developed, a primitive within began as well.  This combination of inner and outer is the essence of life; all zoology must be understood as the dual effort by nature to finally produce the right type of creature - a creature that has found its way, after various dead-ending experimentation and brain stem development, to study what it holds.  Once life "fluoresces" and covers the globe with a biosphere, it finally arrives at the moment of reflection.  An exterior life (without) and an interior life(within) are merged, and self-conscious thought truly begins. This is the turning point when the noosphere is brought into being - the newest global phenomenon to encircle the world.  But, he asks, now that the entire thrust of evolution has produced its fruition, where next?

Highest recommendation!  But a word of warning: this is NOT easy reading; his scholarly discourse, translated from the French, could hardly be more ponderous.  Slog through if you can because the rewards are amazing.

 

(I'm totally recommited to finding a publisher for my second book because of words herein in the latter sections of TdC's great work!  Very inspiring!)