Amir D. Aczel - The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man

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Praise for The Jesuit and the Skull

The clash between science and superstition is one important theme of Amir D. Aczels biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Jesuit and the Skull. A respected paleontologist,Teilhard was a member of the team of scientists who discovered the remains of Peking Man, a promising candidate for the missing link in human evolution, at Dragon Bone Hill in 1929. It was only one episode in an adventurous, tumultuous life that coincided with the wars and revolutions of the early twentieth century. A certain elegant irony lies just beneath the surface of Aczels superb story.Teilhard took pleasure in scientific trips to Spain and France to view cave paintingsthe first stirrings of religious imagination that are regarded as a line of demarcation between prehistoric hominids, essentially apes that walked upright, and the early human beings we must recognize as our direct ancestors.Tens of thousands of years later, the worst features of organized religion distorted and delimited the life and work of this visionary whom the inheritors of the Inquisition saw as a dangerous heretic. Only after Teilhards death were his most important works printed, and only because he put the manuscripts beyond church control by bequeathing them to one of the women who had befriended him.Los Angeles Times

With some conservative religious leaders proclaiming evolution incompatible with Christianity, the time seems to be right for a biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and scientist. Amir D. Aczel takes up the challenge in The Jesuit and the Skull. [It] succeeds in revealing a person for whom the evolution-creation debate wasnt a manufactured controversy designed to attract religious followers or galvanize a political base, but an attempt to reconcile faith with reason and better understand humanitys place in the universe.Archaeology.com

An extraordinary story.The Philadelphia Inquirer

An absorbing read [and a] deeply moving personal story that sheds light on a now vanished world.

Ian Tattersall, Curator, Division of Anthropology,
American Museum of Natural History, and coauthor of Human Origins

The fascinating story of the tumultuous life of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Jesuit and the Skull is also an object lesson in how to reconcile ones religious beliefs with the study of evolution. Amir D. Aczel skillfully brings to life the struggles and achievements of this legendary scientist, and he tells a very human tale with great insight and compassion.

Ofer BarYosef, Professor,
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University

I like to think of the famous Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, as a kind of clerical Indiana Jones. Ruggedly handsome, often in a bush jacket and fedora, Teilhard traveled the globe in the 1920s, searching out fossils and evidence for human evolution. Indeed, as this fine new book on Teilhard shows, the priests work in uncovering and analyzing the remains of Peking Man did indeed support evolution. It provided a key missing link in primate ancestry, a tie between humans and apes. Now if that strikes you as a strange way for a Roman Catholic priest to spend his time, you would not be alone. The Vatican, for example, was never too crazy about Teilhards work and hounded him for much of his career. Plenty of the Jesuit superiors were equally displeased. Exiled from France, forbidden to publish on evolution, denied prestigious academic appointments, Teilhard suffered mightily for his conviction that religion and science are not competitors. He saw them as friendly companions on the road to truth. Each has something to contribute to understanding the inexhaustible puzzle that the universe presents.The great merit of The Jesuit and the Skull is in telling the story of Teilhards distinguished scientific career (and in his effort to integrate his views of science and his Christian faith) in a way that is accessible to readers who are neither scientists nor theologians. Amir D. Aczel so skillfully explains the basic science and is such a good storyteller, that I was caught up in the scientific discovery and taken by the personal anguish of this remarkable priest.The Cleveland Plain Dealer

[Aczels] narrative comes alive.Associated Press

Earlier research into mathematical mysticism well qualifies Aczel for interpreting the life of Teilhard de Chardin, a cleric-scientist who defied the boundaries of both rational science and scriptural orthodoxy. Readers will marvel at how loyal Teilhard remained to a church that repeatedly disciplined him for heresy in his evolutionary explanation of human origins. It was, ironically, by exiling Teilhard from his beloved France that church authorities put him in China, where in 1929 he shared in the discovery of the famous Peking Man fossils. Aczel detailsTeilhards role in that discovery, highlighting his involvement with Lucile Swan, an American artist commissioned to sculpt the ancient hominid. That relationship finally foundered when Teilhard refused to break vows of celibacy sanctified by a church that repaid his fidelity with continued hostility. Nonetheless, Aczel discerns an abiding legacy in the words and writings of a thinker who suffered much for his synthesis of pioneering science and iconoclastic faith.Booklist

Will touch even the most obstinate soldiers of todays culture wars.

Seed magazine

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