Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French: [pj?? teja? d? ?a?d?~] (listen ); 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of the Peking Man.
He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving), and he developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of noosphere.
Although a monitum was issued in regard to some of Teilhard's ideas, he has been posthumously praised by Pope Benedict XVI and other eminent Catholic figures, and his theological teachings were cited by Pope Francis in the 2015 encyclical, Laudato si'.
The response to his writings by evolutionary biologists has been, with some exceptions, decidedly negative.