What is the Noösphere

The Noosphere – literally, means “mind-sphere” or Earth’s mental sheathe. The Noösphere belongs to a family of concepts describing planetary envelopes or domains that have shaped the earth’s history: biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and so on. At the root of the primary definition of noosphere is a dual perception: that life on Earth is a unity constituting a whole system known as the biosphere; and that the mind or consciousness of life – the Earth’s thinking layer – constitutes a unity that is discontinuous but coextensive with the entire system of life on Earth, inclusive of its inorganic support systems. The evidence suggests an emerging noosphere or the unifying field of consciousness described by sages in all cultures.

The term was first proposed by the French philosopher of science, Edouard Le Roy (1870–1954; Smith, 1967), and the French anthropologist–philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (q.v.; Goudge, 1967). It was further promoted by the Russian natural scientist, Vladimir Ivanovich