Noosphere

The following was lifted from Irina Trubetskova's article at www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/preceptorial/Summaries_2004/Vernadsky_Pap_ITru.html
and is provided only as background on the term, not to set the tone of the blog.

Vernadsky defined the future evolutionary state of the biosphere as the Noosphere, the sphere of reason. The term "Noosphere" was first coined by the French mathematician and philosopher, Edouard Le Roy (1927). "Le Roy, building on Vernadsky's ideas and on discussions with Teilhard de Chardin [they both attended Vernadsky's lectures on biogeochemistry at the Sorbonne in 1922-1923], came up with the term "noosphere", which he introduced in his lectures at the College de France in 1927 (Le Roy, 1927)... Vernadsky saw the concept as a natural extension of his own ideas predating Le Roy's choice of the term" (Smil, 2002, p. 13). Le Roy understood the noosphere as a shell of the Earth or a "thinking stratum", including various components, such as industry, language, and other forms of rational human activity (Arbatov and Bolshakov, 1987). Le Roy's concept was developed by De Chardin, who considered the noosphere as something external to the biosphere - a progression from biological to psychological and spiritual evolution. Teilhard based his conception based on philosophical writings, and was completely ignorant of Vernadsky's biogeochemical approach. Vernadsky developed his concept of the noosphere out of his theory of the biosphere, combining his biogeochemical works with his own work in philosophy of science (Grinevald, 1998, p. 24-25):