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Concept
Noosphere
Summary
The noosphere (alternate spelling noösphere) is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the Russian-Ukrainian Soviet biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, and the French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the noosphere as the new state of the biosphere and described as the planetary "sphere of reason". The noosphere represents the highest stage of biospheric development, that of humankind's rational activities.
The word is derived from the Greek νόος ("nous", "mind", "reason") and σφαῖρα ("sphere"), in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere". The concept cannot be accredited to a single author. The founding authors Vernadsky and de Chardin developed two related but starkly different concepts, the former grounded in the geological sciences, and the latter in theology. Both conceptions of the noosphere share the common thesis that together human reason and scientific thought have created, and will continue to create, the next evolutionary geological layer. This geological layer is part of the evolutionary chain. Second-generation authors, predominantly of Russian origin, have further developed the Vernadskian concept, creating the related concepts: noocenosis and noocenology.
The term noosphere was first used in the publications of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1922 in his Cosmogenesis. Vernadsky was most likely introduced to the term by a common acquaintance, Édouard Le Roy, during a stay in Paris. Some sources claim Édouard Le Roy actually first proposed the term. Vernadsky himself wrote that he was first introduced to the concept by Le Roy in his 1927 lectures at the College of France, and that Le Roy had emphasized a mutual exploration of the concept with Teilhard de Chardin. According to Vernadsky's own letters, he took Le Roy's ideas on the noosphere from Le Roy's article "Les origines humaines et l’evolution de l’intelligence", part III: "La noosphere et l’hominisation", before reworking the concept within his own field, biogeochemistry.
Official source
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