The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader

Global Environment, Society and Change

David Pitt, Paul R. Samson, David Pitt, Paul R. Samson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134707171
• Topic: Naturwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Humangeographie

The Reader is the first comprehensive history of the noosphere and biosphere. Drawing on classical influences, modern parallels, and insights into the future, the Reader traces the emergence of noosphere and biosphere concepts within the concept of environmental change. Reproducing material from seminla works, both past and present, key ideas and writings of prominent thinkers are presented, including Bergson, Vernadsky, Lovelock, Russell, Needham, Huxley, Medawar, Toynbee and Boulding, and extensive introductory pieces bu the editors drawattention to common themes and competing ideas. Focussing on issues of origins, theories, parallels and potential, the discussions place issues in a broad context, compare and contrast central concepts with those of the Gaia hypothesis, sustainability and global change, and examine the potential application of noospheric ideas to current debates about culture, education and technology in such realms as the Internet, space exploration, and the emergence of super-consciousness. Literally the `sphere of mind or intellect', the noosphere is aprt of the `realm of the possible' in human affairs, where there is a conscious effort to tackle global issues The noosphere concept captures a number of key contemporary issues - social evolution, global ecology, Gaia, deep ecology and global environmental change - contributing to ongoing debates concerning the implications of emerging technologies.

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INTRODUCTION: SKETCHING THE NOOSPHERE

This anthology is intended as a contribution to the history of ideas, or more specifically a single idea – the noosphere. In an era of accelerating change across the globe, we assert that the concept of the noosphere (literally, the sphere of mind or intellect) is an increasingly important part of the debate on the evolution of human society and its position in the biosphere. One current and pressing example concerns what humans are capable of doing in the face of global environmental change (climate change, biodiversity loss, stratospheric ozone depletion, etc.) on a scale and volatility unprecedented at least since the beginning of human civilisation. Finally, as we begin a new millennium, there is a yearning for a new vision of the future. We suggest that the noosphere represents a crucial reference point for such a discussion.

Although the idea of noosphere is not new (the term itself has been in use for more than seventy years), contemporary changes are likely to make it increasingly pertinent. We are witnessing a reassessment of old ideas. Reflecting on the need for a new vision, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson (1998a: 8) suggests that many thinkers of the Enlightenment were mostly right in their assumptions ‘about a lawful material world, the intrinsic unity of knowledge, and the potential for indefinite human progress.’ Time magazine, in a special issue (1997) entitled ‘The New Age of Discovery’, drew attention to the relevance of old schools of thought for present and future problems (Boorstin 1997). Old scientific questions continue to be hotly debated. One of the most central questions – the place and role of humans in the Earth’s evolution – remains a fundamental issue of discussion. Is Homo sapiens merely primus inter pares – no more than first among equals in the animal world – or does consciousness and reflexivity set humanity apart from all other species in an unprecedented and fundamental way? Are we guardians or tenants on Earth? Are we masters of our future? These are, of course, perennial philosophical questions, but the complexity of today’s computing and information technology has reached a point where we can ask such questions and get answers not considered before. Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired, argues a similar point in suggesting that today’s new tools, made possible through high technology, enable us to formulate fresh theories for old questions (1998). From this perspective, we find both historical bearing and contemporary resonance in the idea of the noosphere.

The noosphere is variously used but rarely defined. It is employed with some regularity in metaphysical discussions on human evolution and global ecology, and has recently become a favourite term for a nascent form of ‘global consciousness’ that is said to be emerging through worldwide information networks. The noosphere is described concisely by the British scientist Sir Peter Medawar ‘as signifying the realm or domain in which mind is exercised’ (1988: 588).

However, such a strict definition tells us little about the origins or implications. For our purposes, the noosphere may be broadly seen as a process of an increasingly complex inter-meshing of cognitive realms within the biosphere – an unfolding of individual and collective ideas, mentalities, aspirations and experience.

At the outset, it is essential to underline that the noosphere concept is intrinsically linked to the notion of a continuously evolving planet Earth. As such, evolution may be conceptualised as consisting of three principal phases, each with a corresponding ‘layer’: the physical formation of the planet itself (the geosphere), the birth of life (the biosphere) and the emergence of human consciousness and self-reflexivity (the noosphere). Although this last phase – originally conceptualised in French (Le Roy 1928: 37–57) as the ‘hominisation’ of life – is our main focus here, the three phases are part of an inseparable process of planetary evolution that continues to the present. The broad context is therefore one of dynamic flow and interdependence between each of these phases and layers. The crucial issue becomes one of debating different interpretations of these relationships and their implications for society.

The noosphere idea is grounded on a firm physical, scientific foundation. Following the pioneering work of the Russian Vladimir Vernadsky (1924; 1929) on the evolution of global natural systems, the biosphere has become a firmly established concept – albeit with varying degrees of precision – in the natural sciences. In contrast to some of the deterministic ideas often attached to the biosphere, the notion of noosphere places the major importance on cognitive and humanistic processes. The concepts of noosphere and biosphere are nonetheless complementary – necessarily so. They may be seen as different halves of the larger whole, conflicting elements providing a form of balance between the creative world of our imagination and the physical domain of our material existence. In contrast to postmodernist thinking (e.g. Foucault 1982), the idea of the noosphere suggests that mental constructs, although enjoying great latitude, are themselves a product of the biosphere and are therefore inseparable from it.

Although the noosphere idea is a product of the scientific revolution, it implies different approaches to the concept of evolution. In contrast to classical Darwinism, the aim is cooperation rather than competition. Unlike a deep ecologist perspective on life, it is firmly based on anthropocentric principles. The context is emergent and convergent, and there is a sense of continuity that sets it apart from material-based notions. The force behind the notion of ‘mind’ – a form of dissipative self-organisation – is seen to consist of more than mechanical animation and has been viewed as a possible bridge between science and spirituality. The noosphere idea, however, has not been only theoretical or mystical. There has been a practical side, especially in the senses of global education, environmental management and most recently, global information systems such as the Internet. The United Nations is one form of application of such ideas, especially within that body’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), whose development was partly inspired by the ideas of the noosphere.

In order to provide a common thread through the readings that follow, we outline four basic senses in which the concept of the noosphere has been, and is being, used. Although these concepts are interrelated and potentially overlapping, each has important distinctions.

1 The noosphere is a product of the biosphere as transformed by human knowledge and action. This view asserts that the Earth, over time, is reconstituted through deliberate, large-scale human impacts on the natural environment. The product is a world in which the environment is altered (perhaps detrimentally) but in which human knowledge offers the potential for longer-term sustainable management or even improvement. In this view, humans have the potential to more or less control their environment, for better or worse. The origins of this perspective may be traced to geology in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the recognition of ‘man as a planetary geological agent’ – a view that was forcefully elaborated by Vladimir Vernadsky in the 1920s and 1930s. More recently, this view has provided a cornerstone for work on global environmental change and sustainable development (e.g. Clark and Munn 1986). Importantly, this perspective raises the notion of some form of planetary management – the idea of a ‘mission to planet Earth’ (Malone 1986).

2 The noosphere represents an ultimate and inevitable sphere of evolution. In this view, the emergence of Homo sapiens as a conscious, self-reflexive being on the planet is as fundamental as the appearance of life itself, and represents a higher plane of evolution, moving beyond Darwinism. From this moment onwards, the Earth is seen to be part of a universal process where intelligent life takes on a new form of existence in which the spiritual takes precedence over the material. The result places humans in a superior position vis-à-vis the natural environment. Marxism, particularly as influenced by Frederich Engels, proposed cosmological notions of inevitability and the triumph of the conscious being. The most direct influence, however, has been the strand of thought developed by the Frenchmen Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Edouard Le Roy in the 1920s as a scientific approach with a bridge to religion. Extending these ideas, some contemporary religious thinkers continue to pursue similar arguments, although they do not claim a scientific base (Marie 1984; Cunningham 1997).

3 The noosphere is a manifestation of global mind. This view holds that the noosphere is essentially the sum of all intellectual processes, not necessarily implying rational direction, but subsuming rapidly expanding technological globalisation, notably global computer networks, and possibly foreshadowing a superior form of computer-based artificial intelligence. Emphasis here is on the importance of the sheer volume of interactions and connections – particularly of information – between individuals and communities. Marshall McLuhan pointed to the existence of such trends in the early 1960s, largely due to the apparent power of technology to compress the world into a ‘global village’. More recent thinkers, many ‘new age’, have modified and extended this view to different ends, namely the emergence of a ‘global brain’ (Russell 1982) and super-consciousness through the Internet and global information networks (Mizrach 1997).

4 The noosphere is the mental sphere in which change and creativity are inherent although essentially unpredictable. In this view, the world may be altered through conscious human intervention, but such action takes place neither on a predirected path nor with a predetermined outcome. This contrasts with some of the deterministic elements embedded in theories such as Marxist evolution. However, unpredictability does not imply a total lack of human influence. Henri Bergson, who influenced these ideas at the beginning of the century, was a ‘prophet of the unpredictable human spirit’ (Boorstin 1997: 27). Bergson felt this spirit was the life force, or élan vital: a ‘stream of consciousness’ that led to an open and pluralist society, although not limited to the capitalist-based one of subsequent thinkers such as Popper (1991). More recently, the notion of life force – an idea always at the margin of science – has been replaced with the idea of complex, adaptive and emergent systems that are self-organising and perpetuate from their internal dynamics. This view is often described as the ‘science of complexity’ (Kaufmann 1996).

GENESIS AND FIRST USE OF NOOSPHERE

The etymological roots of the word ‘noosphere’ can be traced to the Greek noos (mind) and Latin sphœra (sphere). According to the Oxford Companion for Classical Literature (1997: 34, 434), Anaxagoras (c. 500–428 BC) was the first to point out that mind and intelligence (nous) was a major force distinct from matter. The Oxford English Dictionary (1978: VII, 178), states that the term ‘noetic’ has been employed since the seventeenth century to describe ‘that which applies to mind’. As early as 1834, the French scientist André-Marie Ampère employed the term sciences noologiques in reference to ‘the sciences which have as their object the world of the mind’ (Petit Robert 1982: 1,280). This usage was in contrast to the cosmological sciences, which, from the sixteenth century, had been primarily used to describe physical laws of nature. The biosphere stems from the Greek bios (life) and was coined by Eduard Suess in 1875. The early roots, although not the explicit use of the term, may be traced to earlier thinkers such as the Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lamarck in his Hydrologie (1802). A supplemental discussion and analysis of definitions and origins is presented in Chapter 2.

The actual word ‘noosphere’ (in French, noosphère) was coined in Paris in the 1920s by the French scientist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his compatriot and philosopher Edouard Le Roy and the Russian geochemist Vladimir I. Vernadsky (the latter of whom appears not to have adopted the term until many years later). Although there has been some confusion over who actually used the term first, Teilhard de Chardin (1956) clearly states that the concept was jointly developed by all three, while confiding to his biographer that ‘I believe, so far as one can ever tell, that the word “noosphere” was my invention; but it was he [Le Roy] who launched it’ (Cuénot 1965: 59). The idea of the noosphere seems to have come to Teilhard de Chardin when he was a non-combatant stretcher bearer amid the horrors of the trenches during the First World War. The discussion of the noosphere in Paris in the early 1920s, a loose circle that included Teilhard de Chardin, Le Roy, Bergson and Vernadsky, reflected deep emotion and revulsion against the horrors of war and strong faith in human potential and in science.

For a number of years in the Soviet literature, Vernadsky was given exclusive credit for inventing the term ‘noosphere’. Only after the mid-1980s was the role of non-Soviet influences clearly asserted (Yanshin 1988). Perhaps this can help to explain why much confusion continues over its origins. For example, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1997) incorrectly asserts that the noosphere was ‘probably originally formed as the Russian noosfera’. The absence of any comprehensive study of the subject has added to the inconsistencies. In addition, the noosphere concept was frequently and widely used in the Soviet Union as both a scientific and a political idea – not always with clear distinction in its usage. Moreover, the term was often used for conference themes and even the name of research institutes. A number of these institutes remain in operation, such as the Center for Ecological Noosphere Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (founded in 1989) and the Vernadsky Foundation, which has worked closely with the USSR (and Russian) Academy of Sciences. The principal reason why the concept has not been widely discussed in non-Soviet literature is presumably simple ignorance as well as, during the Cold War, a Western allergy to everything remotely linked to the Soviet Union. This has changed in the late 1990s as a significant, though still small, group of English-speaking thinkers has embraced Vernadsky and the concepts of biosphere and noosphere (e.g. Margulis et al. 1998; Margulis and Sagan 1995). Another recent use of ‘noosphere’ – particularly in the United States – has been widely promulgated within ‘new age’ and ‘cyberspace’ groups, often with little notion of the original use of the concept. These interesting recent developments are taken up in Chapters 2 and 5.

If Teilhard de Chardin, Le Roy and Vernadsky were similarly inspired to use the concept of the noosphere, they developed it in different ways. Whereas Teilhard de Chardin saw it as a thinking layer above the biosphere, Vernadsky described it in essentially scientific terms as a transformed state of the biosphere. Similarly to Teilhard de Chardin, Le Roy believed that the noosphere represented a higher level of the biosphere, but he placed more emphasis on their intimate and evolving relationship. Both Frenchmen were deeply religious and sought a bridge between science and religion. Details of each of these personalities are taken up in Chapter 3, although their basic ideas on the noosphere are briefly outlined here.

In the first published reference to the noosphere, Le Roy emphasised the inherent link with the living biosphere. He describes a complementary relationship in the following terms:

I recall our previous discussions on the intrinsic substantiality of change and of the reality of life above that of the mere living. Vitalism, as I describe it, is nothing more than another way to make the same assertion. It is incarnated in the notion of biosphere and its final legitimacy comes from the biosphere’s dual link: on the one hand with the sphere of brute matter and on the other with that which must be later called the ‘noosphere’; of a type which a thorough study assumes two combined but opposite phases: one physico-chemical and the other psychological.

(Le Roy 1927: 246)

In a second book, Le Roy entitled the last chapter ‘The Contemporary Crisis’, in which he draws attention to the notion of the noosphere as an evolving process, ultimately separating itself from the biosphere and carrying with it both positive and negative potential:

We are, in truth, confronting a phenomenon of planetary, perhaps cosmic, importance. This new force is human intelligence; the reflexive will of humankind. Through human action, the noosphere disengages itself, little by little, from the biosphere and becomes more and more independent, and all this with rapid acceleration and an amplification of effects which continue to grow. Correlatively however, by a sort of return shock, hominisation has introduced, in the course of life, some formidable risks.

(Le Roy 1928: 332)

Teilhard de Chardin’s description of the noosphere would seem to be more spiritual than that of Le Roy, underlining a ‘psycho-biological’ dimension linking mind and spirituality to the physical nature of living systems. In his most famous and widely discussed work, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard de Chardin (1959: 202) defined the noosphere as ‘a new layer, the “thinking layer”, which since its germination at the end of the Tertiary era, has spread over and above the world of plants and animals. In other words, outside and above the biosphere there is the noosphere.’ He draws attention to the idea of an ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of boxes
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements and sources
• 1 Introduction: Sketching the Noosphere
• 2 Origins: The Biosphere and the Noosphere
• 3 Theories: The Evolution of the Concept of ‘Noosphere’
• 4 Parallels: Gaia and Global Change
• 5 Potential: The Future of the Noosphere
• 6 Epilogue: The Noosphere and Contemporary Global Issues
• Bibliography
• Index