What Is The Noosphere?
Thinking Planetary Thinking with Clément Vidal
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Last month I hosted philosopher and evolutionary theorist Dr. Clément Vidal to discuss his latest article “What is the noosphere?”. Throughout our discussion we explore the far future of intelligent life in the context of cosmic complexity and thermodynamics, the notion of noosphere in its historical context, the visionary insights of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, as well as Vidal’s own revisioning of the noosphere using living systems theory. In Vidal’s thoughts the noosphere needs to be situated in living systems theory in order to think through the practical processual emergence of a potentially integrateable sociopolitical entity.
Clément Vidal is a philosopher with a background in logic and cognitive science. He is the co-founder of the Evo Devo Universe community and founder of the High Energy Astrobiology prize. In 2014 he authored The Beginning and the End: The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective. As a philosopher, he is interested in tackling big questions, and bringing together areas of knowledge such as cosmology, physics, astrobiology, complexity science and evolutionary theory.
Throughout this video we discuss:
The utility/insight from studying the universe on the largest possible scales of spacetime, i.e. a “big cosmological view” through which we can think our present
Second law of thermodynamics suggests the universe is a growing entropy sink; and yet we still observe the rise of complexity in our local region (Earth)
The process of complexification can be most visibly observed in the compression of our technology, potentially towards the control of inner space
The concept of noosphere as a new level of complexity, a sphere of mind/thought on top of the geosphere (Earth) and biosphere (life)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin first proposed the concept of noosphere, he was a prophetic future-oriented thinker who thought in evolutionary-spiritual terms
Teilhard de Chardin developed the concept of noosphere towards omega point, the ultimate state of compression expressed in complexity-consciousness
Noosphere as an important concept in contemporary discourses which tend to over-emphasise the negative impacts of human beings on a global level
The potential of thinking the noosphere scientifically using living systems theory, to think of the noosphere as possessing a boundary and reproduction function
Thinking the noosphere as the next metasystem transition towards a higher level of organisation involving the integration of nation states to a higher order
Speculative possibilities that future alien contact will not be between humans and another alien organism, but between noospheres contacting/interacting
To find out more about Dr. Clément Vidal’s work, see below