The Vision of the Past

Dust jacket notes: "In the direction of the very small and the very great, modern science is trying to develop a power of vision into space, on which scientifically everything else depends. Less noticed, but just as intense and persistent, is a parallel effort to increase our perception of time along the only path open to such research: in the direction of the past. Today the meaning of these investigations begins to emerge. 'It is probably not in the faraway past,' writes Teilhard, 'that the origins happened, but ahead, in the direction of the future in formation....Here are the great beginnings.' In these twenty-one chapters, the author develops the theory of Transformism - the change from one species to another through evolution. He discusses its early stages, the developments that led some scientists to doubt it, the resistance encountered in theological circles, and, finally, the true significance of Transformism for the future as Teilhard sees it. Time Magazine said of Teilhard, 'One of the century's most remarkable prophetic thinkers, an Aquinas of the atomic era. For Teilhard was not only a scientist who studied the world's past. He was also a philosopher-mystic who saw man evolving toward the ultimate encounter with what Teilhard, ever groping for new ways to express ancient truth, called the "Omega point." Other men have called it God.'"