The noosphere is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, and philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The word is derived from the Greek νόος (“nous, mind, reason”) and σφαῖρα (“sphere”), in lexical analogy to “atmosphere” and “biosphere”.

The noosphere is one of those suggestive ideas which remains in the frontier of the adjacent possible. (You can google it and judge yourself).

In a recent review paper¹ by Clément Vidal, he maintains that the noosphere remains underappreciated and understudied despite its potential to explain the emergence of a new thing on Earth, because its very definition is often unclear.

Vidal is member of Human Energy, an organization aiming to introduce the Noosphere as a source of meaning for future generations in our globalizing world.

The concept cannot be accredited to a single author:

Its history starts in 1922–1923, when Vladimir Vernadsky (1924, 1945) visited the Sorbonne in Paris and started lecturing about geochemistry and the biosphere. This triggered discussions and collaborations with two Bergsonian thinkers, palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and mathematician Edouard Le Roy who proposed that the biosphere is evolving a new thinking layer, or noosphere.

In the theory of Vernadsky, 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.

For Teilhard de Chardin, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the Earth.

We must enlarge our approach to encompass the formation, taking place before our eyes and arising out of this factor of hominization, of a particular biological entity such as has never before existed on earth—the growth, outside and above the biosphere, of an added planetary layer, an envelope of thinking substance, to which, for the sake of convenience and symmetry, I have given the name of the Noösphere. (From noos, mind: the terrestrial sphere of thinking substance.)

Vidal argues that James Grier Miller’s Living Systems Theory can clarify two fundamental meanings: the nosphere as a planetary superorganism and the noosphere as a sphere of mind, storing, processing and spreading information (my emphasis):

Living Systems Theory provides a robust foundation to define and think about the noosphere. We saw that the noosphere can have at least the following four meanings. If we consider it as a planetary superorganism, it has to do with all processes involving matter, energy and information on Earth. If one wants to focus on the mind (noos) aspect, we can restrict it to all information processing happening in humans and their technologies. We saw that the most critical and challenging issue is how to transition towards the noosphere, and this aspect can be approached with evolutionary science, as a planetary major evolutionary transition. The noosphere is also often accompanied by future visions of what our planet could become and what kind of features could emerge in the near future. We outlined two speculative futures: the emergence of a planetary consciousness and a growing will to make or join other noospheres in the galaxy.

Is it clear? If you do not understand it, maybe you can ask ChatGPT

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(1) Vidal, Clément. n.d. ‘What Is the Noosphere? Planetary Superorganism, Major Evolutionary Transition and Emergence’. Systems Research and Behavioral Science n/a (n/a). Accessed 17 March 2024. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2997.

Featured Image: Midjourney, via Ron Jones, “The Noosphere: A conversation with ChatGPT”