Amir Aczel - Exploring Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Scientific Roots

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is considered by many to be the godfather of evolutionary spirituality. And the influence of this early twentieth-century Jesuit priest and paleontologist, who kept a picture of Christ right next to a picture of Galileo on his bedside table, can be found just about anywhere you look in the fertile territory where science and spirituality meet. With the upcoming publication of Amir Aczel’s The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man, we get a deeper look into thescientific career of this evolutionary mystic, which included some of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century, and helped to shape his groundbreaking evolutionary worldview.

In this interview, EnlightenNext's Carter Phipps and Carol Raphael speak with Dr. Amir Aczel about his book and why as a science writer he was so interested in the life of de Chardin. Dr. Aczel is a research fellow in mathematics at Boston University and an accomplished biographer of great scientists, including Einstein, Foucault, and Descartes. In this fascinating interview, Aczel describes how Teilhard’s discoveries have shaped our current understanding of humanity’s evolutionary history and why his assignment to the furthest reaches of the Catholic Church’s mission—China—was “one of the greatest ironies in the history of science.” And while he admits that he was not convinced by Teilhard’s radical spiritual ideas, Aczel talks about why his extraordinary character made him the favorite out of all the great minds that he’s biographied.

BIO

Amir D. Aczel is an acclaimed popular science author of numerous books, including several national and international bestsellers. Born in Israel, Aczel spent much of his young life traveling aboard a Mediterranean cruise ship, which his father captained. He credits this experience for inspiring several of his books. Aczel received a BA in mathematics and a Masters in Science from the University of California at Berkeley. He earned his PhD in statistics from the University of Oregon and went on to teach both mathematics and statistics at universities in California, Alaska, Italy, Greece, and Massachusetts, where he is currently a research fellow at Boston University’s Center for Philosophy and History of Science.

His books include The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed (2007), Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe (2005), God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe (1999), and Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem (1997).