Noosphere
The noosphere, also referred to as nousphere, can be seen as the "sphere of human thought" being derived from the Greek νουσ ('nous') meaning 'mind' in the style of 'atmosphere' and 'biosphere'. Just as the biosphere is composed of all the organisms on Earth and their interactions, the noosphere is composed of all the interacting minds on Earth. The word is also sometimes used to refer to a transhuman consciousness arising from all these interactions - which those who have read Teilhard de Chardin sometimes refer to as the Omega Point, and consider the goal of history.
In Vernadsky's theory, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of Teilhard de Chardin, the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere is not something that is just now coming into being, or will emerge in the future; it arrived with the birth of the first cognitive human being, and is manifested throughout the biosphere in the form of human intervention, which principally takes the form of economic development of the planet.
A somewhat different approach focuses on "sustainability," and begins to look at this concept in terms of "co-evolution" [Norgaard, 1994].
History of this expression:
E. LeRoy's Les origines humaines et l'evolution de l'intelligence (1928)
Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1863-1945)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
See also
External links
References
- Paul R. Samson and David Pitt (eds.) "The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change" (ISBN 0-415-16644-6)
- World Futures, Volumes 49 (3-4) & 50 (1-4) 1997, Special Issue : "The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information" http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/fis96/programme.html
- Raymond, Eric. "Homesteading the Noosphere"
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/ (2000) - Norgaard, R. B. (1994). Development betrayed: the end of progress and a coevolutionary revisioning of the future. London; New York, Routledge.