Noosphere

1. This is a postulated biological entity which is in process of emerging at the top of the biosphere (Vernadsky), or outside and above it (de Chardin) as an added planetary layer, an envelope of thinking substance.

2. The noosphere is defined as a collective human organism which is formed through the mutually reinforced evolutionary processes of complexification due to the growth of human consciousness and the emergence of consciousness as the outcome of complexity. Additionally, whilst a development of a noosphere may be continuation of the evolutionary process, it is conceived to be radically different in that the development of individual conscious reflection compels human beings to draw together into a new communicative pattern. As individual centres of consciousness acquire autonomy on emerging into the sphere of reflection, instead of being confined to the normal process of phylogenetic development, they are visualized as passing tangentially into a field of attraction which forces them toward one another. The result is that the entire system of zoological radiations which in the ordinary course, using geometric metaphor, would have culminated in a knot and a fanning out of new divergent lines of development, would tend instead to fold in upon itself. This, theoretically, leads to the spread of a living, conscious complex constituted over the whole surface of the globe. Alternatively imaged, the reflective coiling of the individual upon himself leads to the coiling of the phyla upon each other, which in turn leads to the coiling of the whole system about the closed convexity of the Earth. The genetically associated occurrences of psychic centration, phyletic intertwining and planetary envelopment taken together thus give rise to the noosphere in de Chardin's graphic description.

3. Other concepts of the noosphere using other terminology are less visually oriented though more materialistic. Spiritual concepts of the noosphere existed in ancient religions (Zorastrianism, Gnosticism, Kabbalah, etc.) of which traces remain in the Christian (Lord's Prayer) 'Kingdom, power and glory', and (revelations) 'the New Jerusalem'.