Noosphere

Formation of the concept

"Noosphere" joins the Greek νοῦς (nous, mind, reason) and σφαῖρα (sphaira, sphere); it is, in short, the sphere of reason. Arranged as stages of the Earth's development, geosphere (inanimate matter) → biosphere (biological life) → noosphere (human rational activity), it is the highest of the three.

The concept cannot be credited to one author. Édouard Le Roy, professor of mathematics at the Sorbonne, defined the noosphere as a "thinking" envelope formed by human consciousness, and stressed that he reached the idea together with his friend Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a geologist, evolutionary paleontologist and Catholic priest. Both drew on the geochemistry lectures Vladimir Vernadsky gave at the Sorbonne in 1922–1923. Vernadsky himself wrote that he was introduced to the concept by Le Roy in his 1927 lectures at the Collège de France, took the idea from the article "Les origines humaines et l'évolution de l'intelligence" (1928), and reworked it within his own field of biogeochemistry. Accounts nevertheless differ: Teilhard's publications already used the term in 1922, while some sources call Le Roy the first to propose it, and the historian Bailes concludes that the two were mutual influences.

Vernadsky's noosphere

For Vernadsky the noosphere is a new geological state of the biosphere, reworked by the scientific thought of social humanity. Humankind becomes a geological force that remakes the planet through thought and labour, and for its own preservation must take responsibility for the biosphere's development, which requires a definite social organization and a new ecological and humanistic ethics. He wrote of the noosphere both as an accomplished reality and as an inescapable future.

His noosphere was not an optimistic slogan. Among the conditions he set out were the settlement of the whole planet, a sharp transformation of the means of communication, the strengthening of political ties among states, the predominance of humanity's geological role, the expansion of the biosphere's boundaries and entry into space, the discovery of new energy sources, equality of all races and religions, a greater role for the popular masses in politics, freedom of scientific thought from religious, philosophical and political pressure, a rise in the well-being of working people, and the exclusion of war.

Difference from Teilhard de Chardin

The two authors differed. For Teilhard the noosphere is a mental layer constituted by the interaction of human minds, and evolution moves towards an Omega Point. Vernadsky's noosphere is grounded in geology and biogeochemistry and carries no theological eschatology.

Publication and reception

The principal work is Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon (1938), which appeared only in 1977; a companion article, "A Few Words on the Noosphere," was published in 1944 in Uspekhi sovremennoi biologii. In 1945 "The Biosphere and the Noosphere" appeared in American Scientist, bringing the idea to English readers. The 1972 Stockholm conference made "noosphere" a popular term alongside "ecology," but critics in the natural sciences have long held the doctrine to be ideological and religious-philosophical rather than scientific. Noospherism, the movement built on it, is criticized as a quasi-religious ideology entangled with Russian cosmism and is distinguished from Vernadsky's own legacy.