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LECOMTE DU NOÜY
VÀ
HỌC THUYẾT VIỄN ĐÍCH
Nhân Tử Nguyễn Văn Thọ
Mục lục | Tựa của Phạm Đình Tân
| Thư bà Mary Lecomte du Noüy
| Lời nói đầu
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Sách tham khảo
 
Presentation of the Book
LECOMTE DU NOÜY and TELEFINALISM
Excellencies,
Ladies,
Gentlemen,
It is a great honour
for me to speak before this honorable audience in order to present my
book: Lecomte du Noüy and Telefinalism, recently published by VĂN
ĐÀN.
Logically, it would not
have been necessary to present this book because, once published, it
falls, already, under your direct appreciaton and criticism. Likewise,
it would not have been very convenient for me to speak about it today
because, it would be in bad taste to comment about one’s own book,
-
«the self being hateful», according to Pascal.
Nevertheless, today,
confident in your benevolence, I venture to present it to you, so that I
can express my feelings, my views, and my aims at the time of its
composition, thus making it easier for your appreciation.
LECOMTE DU
NOÜY’S LIFE
Lecomte du Noüy
is the man of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was
born on the 12th December 1883 at Paris amidst changing
world, characterized by many technical and scientific discoveries.
His father was an
architect, his mother, a writer.
Intelligent, gifted,
but delicate and frequently sick during his childhood and his
adolescence, Lecomte du Noüy was obliged to interrupt his studies for
his health. Therefore, he had his Master in Law only at 24 and his Ph.D.
in Law at 27.
Private secretary of
Aristide Briand, then Minister of Justice, dramatist, at the same time
actor, Lecomte du Noüy was served by fortune since the beginning of his
career.
On December 2nd, then
28 years old, he married Miss Jeanne Double. He wanted, then, nothing.
Honor, money, love, situation, everything was available to him.
During these 15 years,
Lecomte du Noüy devoted himself litterally to sciences, attended many
scientific conferences, discovered many phenomena pertaining to blood
serum, invented many instruments of measure (such as tensiometer,
viscometer, ionometer for biological studies, delivered many sicentific
speeches, wrote 167 scientific communications, and four scientific
books.
During his youth
Lecomte du Noüy was influenced by Renan’s and Taine’s ideas, and like
many of his contemporaries, he lived like an atheist and materialist.
He shared the opinion
of his time, according to which:
- Science would solve
finally all the problems.
- Man could know all
the events past and future by calculus, as Laplace sustained in his
principle of determinism.
- Physico-chemical laws
would suffice to explain all the world phenomena… Knowledge, for
instance, would come from sensations, and in last analysis, could be
reduced to movements of molecules.
The apparition of
living animals would have been due to hazard.
The evolution of
animals could be explained by natural mechanism such as natural
selection, sudden mutation, etc. without having to appeal to God’s
hypothesis.
But when he has
attained maturity, i.e. when he had passed beyond 40 years, he had a
spiritual conversion.
Again he believed in
God, again he took into consideration moral and spiritual values. Here
were the main causes which had determined his conversions.
- After ripe thoughts,
Lecomte du Noüy realized that science and materialism did not suffice to
explain reality.
- After long years of
biological experimentations, Lecomte du Noüy saw that living matters did
not obey completely to physico-chemical laws, and that therefore
physico-chemical laws could not explain by themselves alone all the
phenomena in the world in opposition materialistic propaganda.
- Science like man, its
author could not know everything. Human knowledge had a limit as
Heisenberg had shown in 1927, in his Principle of Indeterminism.
- On the other hand, as
Prof. Charles Eugène Guye had demonstrated it by the calculus of
probabilities, the apparition of living animals could not have been the
result of hazard. Lecomte du Noüy, made all the calculi again, and came
to same conclusions.
All these facts
concurred to prove him the falsity of his past views.
But Lecomte du Noüy was
not satisfied for little. He wanted to progress further.
He began to love
philosophy. And afterwards, as he would like to write philosophical
books based upon scientific data, he deemed it necessary to enlarge
first scientific knowledge.
Therefore in 1913, at
the age of 30, he inscribed himself to «La Sorbonne» to attend courses
and practical works in physics and chemistry.
He had the good chance
to have, for professors, the most brilliant French scientists such as
Lippmann, Appell, Pierre Curie and Marie Curie.
In 1914, drafted as
lieutenant, Lecomte du Noüy fortunately met Dr. Alexis Carrel, the
director of a military hospital established at Compiègne, and soon
became the collaborator of this famed scientist.
In 1917, he presented,
at the University of Paris, his thesis for Ph.D. in Science, the title
of which was Experimental Research of Measuring and Calculating
Methods to a Biological Phenomenon: the Cicatrisation.
In 1920, he was invited
by Dr. Carrel to work at the Rockefeller Institute of New York. His
departure for that city, so important for his future scientific career,
has nevertheless not his wife’s approbation.
He embarked in January
1920 and a divorce was brought against him the next year in spite of a
son Phillip, born on November 14. 1917, then four years old.
Since his arrival at
New York, he devoted himself completely to scientific research. Thanks
to his continuous efforts and hard work, he became, soon, a true
scientist and bilologist.
In 1921, in New York,
he met by chance Mary Bishop Harriman at a party organized by Henri Caro
Delvaille, a French painter.
The meeting was the
prelude of an idyllic love. They had similar tastes and distastes, the
same longing for ideal, the same desire to better themselves, to realize
a pure and true love, a good and ideal life.
Their marriage was
celebrated on the 13th of March 1923.
Mrs. Mary Lecomte du
Noüy soon became Lecomte du Noüy’s qualified collaborator during 25
years of life, and a zealous continuator of the scientist’s works after
his death, in 1947.
Lecomte du Noüy worked
seven years at Rockefeller Institute in New York and 8 years at Pasteur
Intitute in Paris.
He decided, then, to
proceed seriously to a critic of knowledge and to a revision of
scientific possibilities. These investigations showed him the relative
value of science and its practical reach.
He examined also
critically all the socialist doctrines and totalitarian systems, and
considered the consequences of their applications in the daily life.
He realized that,
although these doctrines would have contributed to the material welfare
of people, they suppressed, in reality, human liberty, plundered man of
his dignity and reduced him to slavery.
The most typical proof
was furniched by the barbaric and inhuman conduct of the Nazis.
He noted, also, that
many sicentists, for sentimental and political reasons, had hastily
concluded that science could prove God’s non-existence.
He was afraid to see
how much the abandonment of religious beliefs had destroyed the morality
and the spiritual joy of the human genus.
He was more and more
convinced that without «God’s hypothesis» one could not explain the
apparition of life nor the oriented evolution of living animals.
Thus, his belief in God
became more and more confirmed, not in an anthropomorphic God, but
rather in a transcendant and ineffable one. However, he realized the
necessity for defending man’s essential spiritual and religious values
by using the arguments of science itself to oppose the pseudo-scientific
precepts of a generation dedicated to the cult of technology.
At the same time, he
foresaw that human destiny would be fufilled, in spite of all the
vicissitudes of time and history. His vision of human destiny was
influenced by that of Renan, who had believed that mankind would
ultimately progress to a far superior state. He thereafter, decided to
author books which would proclaim his new-found faith, explain his
ideas, and show man a new way, give him a new hope for a better life.
From 1938 to his death
in 1947, he concentrated on elaborating the theory of telefinalism,
encompassing the concepts of God, evolution, moral and spiritual values,
and human destiny. In futherance of this, he wrote four books :
- The Road to Reason
(Longmans Green and Co, N.Y. 1948).
- L’Avenir de l’Esprit
(The Future of the Spirit)
- La Dignité Humaine
(Human dignity)
- Human Destiny
(Longmans Green and Co, N.Y. 1947).
At the end of 1946,
doctors discovered that Lecomte du Noüy has kidney cancer. Surgical
correction and radiotherapy were tried, but in vain. On December 21,
1947 after many months of illness, he requested champagne and proposed a
toast to his beloved wife and his friends. He then fell into a coma and
died the next day at the age of 64. Some days before his death, he
returned to Catholocism, the religion of his childhood and received the
last sacraments of his faith.
In reviewing his life,
we see that he himself progressed steadily along the road of spiritual
evolution. He started as a writer, and dramatist, became a scientist and
finally, a philosopher, a thinker, an ardent believer in spiritual
truth, and even a guide to humanity. His life exemplified Pasteur’s
favourite principles:
1. A love of ideals.
2. Continuous effort.
3. Disinterested
research for truth and immediate rejection of false views.
He had followed the
Moslem saying, «At your birth, you cried and everyone around you
laughed; behave yourself so that, at your death, you may smile and
everyone cry.»
As befits all great
men, he strove to live according to the principles which he developped
in telefinalism. Concerning her husband’s life, Mary Lecomte du Noüy has
written:
«Lecomte du Noüy had
now attained the goal towards which he had unconsciously tended for many
years.»
«Starting from a pure
agnosticism, he had come, thanks to his scientific works, to recognize,
that science could not explain life. His study of evolution had
convinced him of the existence of a Supreme Reason.»
«Life itself had taught
him the necessity of moral principles and their ineffectiveness if they
were not base upon faith.»
«The conviction of a
benevolent Supreme Power was now firmly established im him.»
THE SUMMARY OF
THE BOOK
Having acquainted you
with Lecomte du Noüy’s life, I return to my book. Some years ago, my
friend, Mr. Phạm Đình Tân, Dean of TINH-VIET literary group, and an
admirer and propagator of Lecomte du Noüy’s Telefinalism in Vietnam,
asked me to write a book on Lecomte du Noüy, compiling his works and
presenting the telefinalism in a simplified form, thus rendering it more
accessible to the Vietnamese public.
Realizing the
difficulties of such a task, but also knowing the service that such a
book could eventually render the Vietnamese people, I set out to
accomplish it. Also, I decided to write this book because many of
Lecomte du Noüy’s views were very similar to the ones I expressed in my
«Essay on The Eternal Center», written in 1960. Thus, after many months
of formulating and writing, I am able at last to present this book to
you.
This book is not a
tranlation of Lecomte du Noüy’s writings. Rather, it was written to
present, explain and even criticize Lecomte du Noüy’s ideas and his
Telefinalism. It therefore, differs completely from his works, in
composition as well as in expression. I have attempted to present
Lecomte du Noüy’s ideas and Telefinalism, in a simple style, easily
accessble to the reader. However, since the Telefinalism embraces many
fields - scientific, philosophical, religious and metaphysical, the book
remains, in spite of my efforts at simplification, rather difficult.
That is the problem with scientific and philosophical books. Therefore,
it is sometimes necessary to read a passage again and again in order to
fully grasp the meaning and implications of the theory. This book, in
spite of my attempt to vulgarize it, remains a scientific and
philosophical one.
It refers largely to
scientific, philosophical and religious writings as sources. However, to
allow for easier reading, all the references have been placed in
footnotes, which allows the casual reader to proceed at a faster rate,
while facilitating the work of researchers.
In addition, two
detailed indices, one in Vietnamese and one in French, have been used to
emphasize the important concepts in the book. Anyone with a knowledge of
French could, by reading only the index and the footnotes, master
Lecomte du Noüy’s ideas and telefinalism without having previously read
his books.
The simple plan of this
book consists of three parts:
I. The first part
establishes the historical context and describes Lecomte du Noüy’s life,
his works and his main theses.
II. The second part
presents the telefinalism in 4 chapters:
- Summary
- Criticism of
knowledge
- Account of evolution.
- The telefinalist
hypothesis
- Consequences of the
Telefinalist hypothesis
III. The third part
contains commentaries on and criticisms of his thoughts on evolution,
telefinalism, etc. It also consists of four chapters:
A. Reflections on
Lecomte du Noüy, his life, his ideas.
B. A critique of
evolutionism.
C. A critical analysis
of telefinalism.
D. General conclusion.
PART I
The first part of the
book contains a general survey of the scientific and philosophical
theories and discoveries of the 19th and 20th
centuries. This has been included to show the real physionomy of the
current civilization and how it is completely controlled by financial,
material and temporal values to the detriment of moral and spiritual
ones. Moreover, it helps to explain the confusion of the modern world,
contaminated as it is by spiritual degenaracy. Religious crises, and
impending wars.
In tracing Lecomte du
Noüy’s life, I have emphasized the factors which made him, initially, an
atheist and materialist sicientist, and ultimately a sincere believer in
and fervent defender of moral and spiritual values.
The causes of his
spiritual conversion can be summed up as follows:
- Materialism,
according to his own sientific experiences, did not suffice to explain
all kinds of natural phenomena.
- Human and scientific
knowledge has a limit, a fact well demonstrated in 1927 by Heisenberg in
his Principle of Indeterminism.
- Living cells and
organisms cannot be products of chance. This was mathematically
demonstrated by Prof. Charles E. Guye in 1922.
- Science cannot
eliminate «God’s hypothesis» as our world cannot dispense with
religions.
Lecomte du Noüy’s
thoughts and telefinalism were presented in four of his books:
1.
The Road to Reason.
2.
The Future of the Spirit.
3.
Human Dignity.
4.
Human Destiny.
In «The Road to
Reason», Lecomte du Noüy made a critical survey of science. According to
him, science is not omnipotent, but has only a relative and practical
value. He also proves, by the calculus of probabilities, that life
cannot be a product of chance and as a corollary, that science cannot
eliminate «God’s hypothesis».
In «The Future of the
Spirit», he introduces Telefinalism. Like Lamarck and Darwin, he
believes in the evolution of living organisms, but he has gone a step
further by proving that evolution continues in mankind, changing only
its direction to become inner, intellectual, moral and spiritual.
Furthermore, he shows that evolution will continue in the future,
ultimately resulting in a pure and spiritual race, in the advent of the
spirit.
This is the remote aim,
the «Tele-aim» of evolution.
In Human Dignity,
Lecomte du Noüy extols human dignity and defends it against the current
oppression and tyranny of social institutions. According to him human
dignity, far from being innate, must be earned, acquired by a continuous
struggle against man’s animal instincts, the «endocrine slavery».
In Human Destiny,
Lecomte du Noüy consolidates and systematizes the main ideas advanced in
the three preceding books, urging mankind to ignite the divine spark
concealed in him and to aid evolution to realize human destiny, human
perfection.
PART II
The second part of the
book presents the telefinalism in four chapters:
1.
Criticism of knowledge.
2.
Account of evolution.
3.
The Telefinalist Hypothesis.
4.
Consequenses of the Telefinalist
Hypothesis.
In spite of my efforts
at simplification, this part remains the most technical, and therefore
the most difficult portion of the book.
This section
demonstrates that science has only a relative value, that physical and
chemical laws are not sufficient explanation of natural phenomena, that
life is not a product of chance, and that the hyponhesis of an
«Anti-chance», God, is still valuable in science.
Although Lecomte du
Noüy has given a detailed account of the evolution of animals, I have,
on the other hand, presented only a summary, avoiding technical language
and omitting non essential details. Evolution is a marvelous process
which began approximately one billion years ago. According to Donald
Culross Peattie, our most ancient ancestor would have been a form of
bacteria - used in the botanist’s sense rather than the bacteriologist’s
- the Leptothrix. From this beginning, evolution has passed through
blue, and green algae, trilobites, invertebrates, crustaceans, mollusks,
fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, finally resulting in
man.
Lecomte du Noüy’s
conclusions on evolution can be summarized as follows:
The evolutionary
process remains mysterious in many aspects and many problems are
virtually insoluble. Present methods of investigating this process are
decidedly poor, and paleontological data are still insufficient. For
these reasons, evolution remains in the form of hypotheses, and a
scientist who writes on evolution in effect, composes an historical
novel.
Following this portion
of the book, I have reviewed very briefly, the classical theories which
attempt to explain the mechanics of evolution, for instance, the works
of Lamarck, Darwin, Weissman, and De Vries.
The Telefinalism is
then explained very simply. One need only to look at the titles of the
sections to grasp the main ideas of telefinalism. Here are its main
features:
- Evolution implies the
intervention of a supreme intelligence - the ‘Anti-Chance’.
- Evolution is
oriented, «telefinalized».
- Evolution continues,
since the advent of man, on the moral and spiritual planes.
- The final result of
evolution will be the advent of the Spirit.
In formulating
Telefinalism, Lecomte du Noüy has relied on scientific data and
paleontological discoveries to describle evolution from the living cell
to the first animal, and from the first animal to man.
Then, he has referred
to Prehistory and the Bible to demonstrate that, with man, evolution has
left the anatomical and biological planes for the moral and spiritual
planes.
Finally, he resorted to
intuition and reason to postulate that evolution will continue far into
the future, resulting in the creation of a superior race, in the advent
of the Spirit.
The principles of
Telefinalism necessitate as consequences:
1. The primary role of
effort and necessity in drawing continuously closer to the human ideal.
2. Individual freedom.
3. A return to the
basic principles of Christianity, acknowledging the Spirit.
4. The primary role of
inner improvement and the secondary role of external reforms.
5. Collaboration
between religion and science and among the various religions for the
service of mankind.
PART III
The third part of the
book is a discussion and criticism of Lecomte du Noüy’s ideas,
evolutionism, and telefinalism. As a critic I have endeavoured to be
impartial and sincere, and have resorted to the comparative method to
estimated the value of and criticize his ideas, evolutionism and
telefinalism. By so doing, I believed I could aid the reader to better
understand Lecomte du Noüy’s ideas, and to discover the universal and
eternal truths inherent in them. I have impartially treated the strong
and weak points of evolutionism and telefinalism. Likewise, I have
compared Lecomte du Noüy’s ideas to those of some great men, past and
present.
In summary, I believe
that Lecomte du Noüy was a very noble and religious man; a man
respectful of moral and spiritual values, but free from the bondage of
conformism. He did not work, nor did he struggle for the sake of any
particular religion, but tried to find the common denominator of them
all. He maintained that all religions should purify themselves of
acquired superstitions, correct their past mistakes, and cooperate with
science to better serve humanity.
As for evolution, I
think that in spite of its present vogue and its immense contribution to
science and philosophy, it still has imperfections, which should be
amended and perfected.
Concerning
Telefinalism, I believe that it can contribute much to the advancement
of humanity. It can, in fact, reconcile science and religion and make
profitable use of scientific discoveries to extol moral and spiritual
values. Likewise, it encourages efforts toward cooperation of all men in
establishing a superior race and realizing the potential of human spirit
and ideals.
Finally, I have made
some personal observations concerning evolutionism and telefinalism.
I think that changes in
the universe cannot be unidirectional, that is from spirit to material
or from material to spirit. Rather, it proceeds from spirit to material
and from material to spirit.
Any change implies
either progression (evolution), or regression (involution), as the
Yi-King «The Book of Change», sustained some three thousand years ago.
In fact, in many ways, involution is linked with extroversion and
evolution with introversion.
Science and
evolutionism seem to accept only change of one direction, that is
«linear change»; Lecomte du Noüy saw intuitively two directions of
change, but he was reluctant to develop this observation.
Besides, I feel that if
one cannot discover the «Principal Being», the «Primordial Substance» of
the Universe, one cannot explain evolution. In fact, the process of
universal change should be operated from the One to the Multiple, and
from the Multiple to the One, according to the law of cyclical
revolution sustained by the Yi-king.
The great defect of
evolutionism is that it is unable to determine the ‘Primordial
Substance’, the ‘Principal Being’ of the Universe, and that it
postulates instead, as a starter, the infinitesimal material atom, or
the primordial living cell, bacteria or alga. Without the ‘Principal
Being’, it cannot explain the spirit, the ‘Whole’ of the Univere.
Concerning the sense of
evolution, I believe as Lecomte du Noüy, that man also evolves on the
moral and spiritual planes and this will result in the advent of the
spirit.
But I have tried to
reconcile this view to the tripartite conception of man (spirit, soul,
body) suggested by the Bible:
«Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind.» (Mat. 22,37)
«I pray God your whole
spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our
Lord, Jesus Christ.» (I. Thes. 5,23)
The tripartite
conception of man’s being has also been suggested by many oriental
mystics, as is well known.
The reason is very
simple: To become spirit, we should have latent in ourselves the germ of
spirit; we should be potential spirits, if not, all our efforts for
spiritualization should be in vain. The ancient Latin adage, «Omne ovum
ex ovo» (All eggs come from an egg) finds here particular meaning.
I have also inferred
that if man, one day, becomes spirit, humanity will enjoy a Golden Age
predicted 3000 years ago by Jeremiah (Jer. 318, 31-34) and Isaiah (Isa,
65, 21-25), and considered realizable by many thinkers and scientists.
As Lecomte du Noüy I
believe that evolution will result in the advent of the spirit, but I
have added that in this paradisiac future, man will be united with God,
and God will be «all for every-one (I Cor. 15,28). This is also the view
of Laotse (Laotse, Tao Teh King. chapter 68) and of Teillhard de
Chardin (Cf. Georges Magloire, Teillhard de Chardin, pp. 123 and
222).
In brief, I hope that
in reading this critical study of telefinalism, the reader will master
the thoughts of Lecomte du Noüy; will gain a more realistic and
objective view of the world; will be able to discover the mysteries of
the universe; will develop his latent faculties; will make radiant the
‘divine spark’ that now lies hidden in him; will find the sense and the
meaning of life, will actively contribute to evolution; will realize
their destiny; and will become a more perfect and ideal human being.
These are also the hopes of Lecomte du Noüy and if they be so, I will
consider myself amply rewarded.
Nhân Tử Nguyễn Văn Thọ
Personally, I am an advocate of cyclical change, as opposed linear
change. In this regard, the following quotations are apropos:
«There is coincidence of
the beginning and the end» (Radhakhrishnan) and:
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