Whitehead and Teilhard: From Organism to Omega

The works of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955) continue to inspire distinctive trajectories in theology and philosophy. Although contemporaries for a time, both men were unable to benefit from each other’s vast cosmological visions, and they continue to be studied largely independent of each other’s contributions. What results when Whitehead and Teilhard meet? What do they each offer the other such that a mutual deepening might take place? What is their shared relevance to contemporary concerns across philosophy, science, religion, and ecology? The first of its kind, this book draws together key Whitehead and Teilhard scholars to advance the possibilities of process philosophy and theology through an integrative encounter between these two foundational figures.

Ilia Delio, OSF, a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, is Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Christian Theology, Villanova University, and founder of the Center for Christogenesis. Her area of research is systematic-constructive theology with a focus on evolution, quantum physics, and artificial intelligence and the import of these for Christian doctrine and life. Her many books include The Not-Yet God, The Hours of the Universe, Christ in Evolution, The Emergent Christ, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian, and Re-Enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion (all with Orbis).

Andrew M. Davis is an American process philosopher, theologian, and scholar of cosmological wonder. He is program director for the Center for Process Studies, where he researches, writes, and organizes conferences on various aspects of process-relational thought in relation to current issues in science, philosophy, and religion/theology. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of several books, including Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy, Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy, and Metaphysics of Exo-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology.