The whole life lies in the verb seeing.
The stars are laboratories in which the evolution of matter proceeds in the direction of large molecules.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that stars play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of complex matter, particularly large molecules.
In this quote, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin emphasizes the importance of stars as sites of scientific activity where the processes of evolution occur on a cosmic scale. He highlights that in these celestial 'laboratories', the transformation and complexity of matter evolve, showcasing the universe's capacity to create intricate structures from simpler elements over time. This notion reflects a deep connection between the cosmos and the fundamental processes of life and matter.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about astrophysics, one might use this quote to illustrate the significance of stars in the chemical evolution of the universe.
More from Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
All quotes βReligion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.
The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.
We may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world.
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me - I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.
Similar quotes
It is mistaken to claim that global problems will be solved more quickly if only researchers would abandon their quest to understand the universe and knuckle down to work on an agenda of public or political concerns. These are not 'either/or' options - indeed, there is a positive symbiosis between them.
The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer.
I think the next century will be the century of complexity.
Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly active, and if it was not getting its usual stimulation..., it would create its own stimulation in the form of hallucinations.
Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.
Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind.