Noosphere
노오스페라
A concept formalized by Vladimir Vernadsky denoting the new geological stage the biosphere enters when transformed by human scientific thought and collective labor, the planetary 'sphere of reason.' The term was first proposed in the 1920s by Édouard Le Roy, who attended Vernadsky's biogeochemistry lectures at the Sorbonne; Vernadsky reworked it within his Earth-science framework and presented its most complete form in Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon (1938). Distinct from Teilhard de Chardin's theological noosphere, Vernadsky's insight, that human reason becomes a geological force shaping the Earth, continues to resonate in ecology, Earth-system science, and cosmology.
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Sources
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian Wikipedia: full account of the noosphere concept, its origins with Le Roy and Teilhard de Chardin, Vernadsky's 12 conditions for the noosphere, and subsequent criticism
- Wikipedia (EN) English Wikipedia: Vernadsky's noosphere as the third phase of Earth's development (geosphere → biosphere → noosphere), distinction from de Chardin's theological version, and the term's coinage by Le Roy
- organism.earth Vernadsky's own text 'The Transition from the Biosphere to the Noösphere,' Chapter 7 of Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon (1938), hosted by the Library of Consciousness
- noosphere.antikythera.org Vernadsky's Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon, translated excerpt: 'the biosphere... transforms into a new state, the noösphere' and attribution to Le Roy (1928)