Teilhard's Noosphere

Advances in analytical understanding of the biogeochemical cycles of the Biosphere have spawned the concepts of Gaia and Noosphere. Though seldom acknowledged today. it was the natural scientist Vladimir Vernadsky who first drew attention to the increasing scale of human intervention into planetary biogeochemical cycles. He did so in his book "Biosfera", published in 1926. In concert with the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Vernadsky developed the notion of Noosphere -- an evolving collective human consciousness on Earth which was exerting an increasing influence on biogeochemical processes. More recently, the atmospheric chemist James Lovelock has introduced the notion of the Earth as Gaia. In an attempt to explain chemical disequilibria in the Earth's atmosphere, Lovelock has postulated the Earth to be a self-regulating system made up of biota and their environment with the capacity to maintain the Earth's environment in a steady state favorable to life. Gaia and Noosphere have come to represent contrasting interpretations of humanity's relation to planetary ecology, thereby providing potent symbols for human action. With rapid advances in instruments of measurement coupled with increased international scientific cooperation, an analytical science of the Biosphere is emerging. The contradictions of the nature-centered view of Gaia and the human-centered view of Noosphere could become irrelevant as a result.

Chapter 1. A special role of the alive on the Earth. A special role of man on the Earth. Chapter 2. A special role of mind on the Earth and in the Universe. E. Le Roy: Introduction of the concept of the "noosphere". Chapter 3. The conceptions of the founders of the doctrine of the noosphere, V.I. Vernadsky and P.T. de Chardin. Chapter 4. Theoretical Noospherology. "Natural" Trend: Ecological Approach. Chapter 5. (Theoretical Noospherology) "Natural" Trend: Naturally-Informational and Theologically-Teleological Approaches. Chapter 6. (Theoretical Noospherology) "Technocratic" Trend in the contemporary interpretations of the concept of the "noosphere ("Reductionist", Technologically-Informational Approaches and Hypothesis of "Technological Singularity"). Chapter 7. Practical Noospherology. "Ecological" and Hybrid" interpretations of the disciplines of Practical Noospherology. Chapter 8. (Practical Noospherology) Cybernetic interpretations of the disciplines of Practical Noospherology.

This contribution addresses the anthropocenic challenge from a dialectical perspective, combining a diagnostics of the present with a prognostic of the emerging future. It builds on the oeuvres of two prominent dialectical thinkers, namely Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Hegel himself was a pre-anthropocenic thinker who did not yet thematise the anthro-pocenic challenge as such, but whose work allows us to emphasise the unprecedented newness of the current crisis. I will especially focus on his views on Earth as a planetary process, emphasising that (in the current situation) the " spirit " of technoscience is basically monitoring the impacts of its own activities on geochemistry and evolution. Subsequently, I will turn attention to Teilhard de Chardin, a palaeontologist and philosopher rightfully acknowledged as one of the first thinkers of the Anthropocene and whose oeuvre provides a mediating middle term between Hegel's conceptual groundwork and the anthropocenic present. Notably, I will discuss his views on self-directed evolution, on the ongoing absorption of the biosphere by the noosphere, and on emerging options for " sublating " the current crisis into a synthetic convergence towards (what Teilhard refers to as) the Omega point. I will conclude that (a), after disclosing the biomolecular essence of life, biotechnology must now take a radical biomimetic turn (a shift from domesticating nature to the domestication of domes-tication, i.e., of technology); that (b) reflection itself must become distributed and collective; and (c), that the anthropocenic crisis must be sublated into the noocene.

Written with students in mind, this paper summarizes the life and work of French paleontologist and Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), revealing his attempt to bring scientific study and spiritual reflection into dialogue in search of answers to some of humankind's deepest human questions.

Biology continues to use the Tree of Life image to show the temporal continuity and discontinuity of the living beings. Moreover, the development of genetic, molecular biology and paleontology has originated phylogenetics. This discipline studies evolutionary relatedness among various groups of organisms through molecular sequencing data and morphological data matrices. The Tree off ers interesting points for semiotic perspectives and for theological approaches too. The symbolic reading of the Tree of Life, on the one hand, and the analogies with the Biblical genealogies and some Christian images, on the other hand, will be explored.

Advances in analytical understanding of the biosphere’s biogeochemical cycles have spawned concepts of Gaia and noosphere. Earlier in this century, in concert with the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the natural scientist Vladimir Vernadsky developed the notion of noosphere-an evolving collective human consciousness on Earth exerting an ever increasing intluence on biogeochemical processes. More recently, the chemist James Lovelock postulated the Earth to be a self-regulating system made up of biota and their environment with the capacity to maintain a planetary steady state favorable to life. This is the Gaia hypothesis. To many, Gaia and noosphere represent contradictory interpretations of humanity’s relation to planetary ecology. Noosphere emphasizes a free will and obligation to shape the destiny of humanity on Earth through technology and new kinds of social relations. In contrast, Gaia invokes mysterious mechanisms of planetary evolution that lie beyond human control and understanding. I argue that if brought together, noosphere and Gaia can provide a useful symbol for guiding human interventions in global ecology because the contradictions of a nature-centered view of Gaia and a human-centered view of noosphere are coming to be irrelevant with the emergence of an analytical science of the biosphere

Énoncé : L'architecture fictionnelle, se basant non seulement sur ses dimensio ns euclidiennes, mais aussi sur la gestion des expériences polysensorielles et comportementale s, pourrait donner une nouvelle conscience à la noosphère, cette phase successive à la biosphère du développement de la terre.
Mots-clés : Anthropocène, noosphère, World-making, conversion imaginaire, architecture fictionnelle.

Might the grand collective cognitive operation of humanity, termed the noosphere, be oriented by a methodological direction? Rewording the original ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in contemporary academic terms, I conceptualise the noosphere as an ongoing interrelating of cognitive processes: an interrelating which progresses through a particular kind of events. I define these noospheric events as instances of cognitive interiorisation that is conducted in a consciously contingent way. I propose that such rewording allows us to address the methodological question of this essay quite precisely.