[For de Chardin, evolutionary history reflects this nested form. “The potential of God of recognizing Himself” corresponds to the “very structure of Nothingness”.]

God starts at the beginning, with a multitude of elements, immense, effectively infinite in number, simple and hardly conscious.

These elements organize themselves, yielding complex forms.

Then de Chardin makes a gigantic jump to the present, where some of these complex forms are capable of recognizing themselves. They are capable of reflection.

[Like all good poets, de Chardin passes over what he does not quite comprehend in one gigantic jump.  He senses, but does not understand “spontaneous order”.

With that note, we can look at the nested forms in de Chardin’s poetic prose.]

Summary of text [comment] page 44

What did de Chardin say?

God bends Nothingness in order to create.  The very structure of Nothingness means that God can proceed in only one fashion: arranging; unifying little by little, under the attraction of His influence; groping with the interplay of great numbers, a multitude of elements, immense, effectively infinite in number, simple and hardly conscious; eventually yielding more complex forms, arriving at forms capable of reflection.

[Does that sound like a spontaneous order or what?  Tielhard described it like a poet.  But Hayek was the one who labeled it. The term, that is. “Spontaneous order”.

What does de Chardin’s poetry suggest?

The drama of evolutionary history starts with God and Nothing.  Well, maybe God and “the potential of God of recognizing Himself”.  After all, if there is only God, then how did everything get here, if everything here is not somehow the potential inherent in God?  I suppose this reflects the essence of the Latin term, “creatio ex nihil“.

What is it about things?  Things seem to belong to the category of actuality.  But to us, things are clearly not God.  This implies that actuality is not of God.

Things are not God.  Things are imbued with God.  Is that not a contradiction? How can this be?

Actuality emerges from possibility.  The realm of possibility allows contradictions.  Contradiction are permitted in the monadic realm of possibility.  So the apparent contradiction must be due to the emergence of actuality from possibility.

“God₃” brings “His Own Actuality₂” into relation with “the potential of God to manifest His Own Actuality₁”.]