

The Noosphere
While several scientists have talked about the noösphere, it’s most often associated with geologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who developed the idea in 1922. The idea of a sphere of thought enveloping the planet has gained in popularity since then, especially as we enter an era known as the Anthropocene that has seen humankind have an increasingly devastating impact on our environment over the last century and more.
Proponents
Noösphere proponents, including Teilhard, saw the development of a noosphere as an organic whole system that develops in the same way as the biosphere and geosphere did. Like a living superorganism, it combines geological, biological, and human activity in a new form of planetary interconnection. This interconnection also includes our growing awareness and capacity for transforming the Earth.
Advocates
Noösphere advocates like Teilhard, Edwin Berger, and Dane Rudhyar saw the noosphere as a planetary sense organ that opens our world to “galactic consciousness.” Reiser builds on their ideas with more scientific detail and incorporates Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity into his description of the noosphere. He argues that the noosphere is evolving through a psi bank program maintained between the Van Allen electromagnetic radiation belts and regulated by four bipolar psi plates. This system moderates the noosphere’s polarizing processes and speeds up its growth. In this way the noosphere is a powerful integrative force that will rebalance our ecological and cultural transformations. It is this type of thinking that can reconcile rupture and formation and allow us to move past the Anthropocene.

The noosphere is a new stage of evolution that allows us to think globally and act globally. The noosphere also connects our minds and our technology in ways that we’ve never been able to do before. This vision of the future is one that does not have the critical and material tone of Crutzen’s Geology of Mankind, but rather carries the promise and meaning of global interconnection and conscious co-operation in facing the ecological challenges of our time.
Some scientists argue that the emergence of the noosphere is essential to reversing the damaging impacts of the Anthropocene and moving beyond it to a more hopeful and constructive future. The noosphere is a unique future vision at the intersection of three other visions: the Cosmic, the Green, and the Geek.
Although a little-known concept in the West, the noosphere has had enormous influence in Russia where it is considered the cornerstone of Russian science. It has spawned schools of cosmism, the perception of cosmic processes in terrestrial affairs, and numerous subgroups within the Russian Academy of Sciences focused on exploring the implications and aspects of this theory.

Russian Biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky prerequisite of a peak in biological combustion to precipitate the noosphere is all but fulfilled with today’s catastrophic climate change. But his larger point, that humanity has entered a new age – a noösphere – that requires a new level of thinking and understanding to meet its full potential remains just as valid today.