The first step in the formulation of a new perspective regarding the role of mankind in the cosmos, according to Teilhard, requires dismissal of an old, modernist deification of science:vi
The nineteenth century had lived in sight of a promised land. It thought that we were on the threshold of a Golden Age, lit up and organized by science, warmed by fraternity. Instead of that, we find ourselves slipped back into a world of spreading and ever more tragic dissension. Though possible and even perhaps probable in theory, the idea of a spirit of the earth does not stand up to the test of experience. No, man will never succeed in going beyond man by uniting with himself. That Utopia must be abandoned as soon as possible and there is no more to be said.
Teilhard may be right. The 20th Century, or perhaps the 21st Century, may someday be identified as an era in which science is dethroning or de-deified. Certainly, the science of management and the science of man are now in a state of disrepair. There is a reintroduction of the spiritual realities that during the rule of science were considered a throwback to superstition and the Middle Ages. A central task of the 21st Century may very well be the reunification of science and religion:vii
To outward appearance, the modern world was born of an anti-religious movement: man becoming self-sufficient and reason supplanting belief. Our generation and the two that preceded it have heard little but talk of the conflict between science and faith; indeed it seemed at one moment a foregone conclusion that the former was destined to take the place of the latter. But as the tension is prolonged, the conflict visibly seems to need to be resolved in terms of an entirely different form of equilibrium—not in elimination, nor duality, but in synthesis. After close on two centuries of passionate struggles, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary. On the contrary, it becomes obvious that neither can develop normally without the other. And the reason is simple: the same life animates both. Neither in its impetus nor its achievements can science go to its limits without becoming tinged with mysticism and charged with faith.
