noosphere

See also: noösphere and noosphère

English

Alternative forms

• noösphere

Etymology

Borrowed from French noosphère, from Ancient Greek νόος (nóos, “mind, spirit”) + Ancient Greek σφαῖρα (sphaîra, “ball, globe”), developed and perhaps coined by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Vernadsky, in analogy to atmosphere, biosphere etc. By surface analysis, nous (“mind”) +‎ -sphere.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnəʊ.əsfɪə/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈnoʊ.əsfɪɚ/

Noun

noosphere (plural noospheres)

1. The sphere of human reason, thought, and consciousness, seen as a theoretical evolutionary stage.
   • 1980, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers, page 573:

     I used to have a pretty clear idea of God. Now we have these new theologians who say God’s inside here not up there or he’s an impersonal noosphere and the anthropomorphic image is out. Three unpersons in one anthropomorphic noosphere.

   • 1995, Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Shambhala, →ISBN, page 66:

     Finally, human beings reproduce themselves mentally through exchanges with cultural and symbolic environments […] These relational exchanges are embedded in the traditions and institutions of a particular society in such a way that that society can reproduce itself on a cultural level, can reproduce itself in the noosphere.

   • 2000 November 18, Alexandre Owen Muniz, “Individualism in Transhuman Society.”, in SL4 mailing list‎^[1], message-ID <3A16FF3F.F030BA6A@xprt.net>:

     […] Therefore, high capacity nodes will experience greater latency from the rest of the noosphere, and the intelligences that inhabit them will likely be more individualistic.

   • 2001 [1999], Eric S. Raymond, “Homesteading the Noosphere”, in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 92:

     This creates a pattern of homesteading in the noosphere that rather resembles that of settlers spreading into a physical frontier—not random, but like a diffusion-limited fractal.

Related terms

• See: nous#Related terms

Translations

noosphere, theoretical stage of evolutionary development

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 心靈空間／心灵空间

• Estonian: noosfäär
• French: noosphère (fr) f
• German: Noosphäre (de) f
• Greek: νοόσφαιρα f (noósfaira)
• Italian: noosfera f
• Latvian: noosfēra (lv) f
• Russian: ноосфе́ра (ru) (noosféra)
• Turkish: noosfer

See also

• Omega Point

Further reading

• noosphere on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “noosphere”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.