Omega Point
Definition
From the Wikipedia:
"The Omega Point is a supposed future when everything in the universe spirals toward a final point of unification."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point)
Description
1.
Omega point is a term invented by French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to describe the ultimate maximum level of complexity-consciousness, considered by him the aim towards which consciousness evolves. Rather than divinity being found "in the heavens" he held that evolution was a process converging toward a "final unity", identical with the Eschaton (theology and with God. According to Chardin and the Russian scholar and biologist Vladimir Vernadsky (author of The Geosphere 1924 and The Biosphere 1926), the planet is in a transformative process, metamorphosing from the biosphere into the Noosphere. (excerpted from the Wikipedia).
De Chardin's ideas, like the Noosphere and the Omega point, certainly influenced a lot the more mystical crew of cyberculture. It's easy to see in noosphere the prefiguration of the Web, and in the "omega point" the idea of the Net becoming a god-like sentient, an idea already present in William Gibson's trilogy. This "digital chardinism" is certainly one of the motors of the "free" ideology. One may find De Chardin's influence on people like John Perry barlow, for instance, who said: ""Teilhard's work is about creating a consciousness so profound it will make good company for God itself."
Now, de Chardin "omega point" was restricted to earth. Currently, some transhumanists thinkers like Frank Tipler name "omega point" a state of superintelligence existing at the end of the universe.
2. From the Wikipedia:
"The Omega Point is a supposed future when everything in the universe spirals toward a final point of unification. The term was invented by the French Jesuit Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955).[2] Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from true God", and "through him all things were made".[3] In the Book of Revelation, Christ describes himself thrice as "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end". The idea of the Omega Point is developed in later writings, such as those of John David Garcia (1971), Paolo Soleri (1981), Frank Tipler (1994), and David Deutsch (1997).
...
According to Teilhard, evolution does not end with mankind and Earth's biosphere evolved before humans existed. He described evolution as a progression that begins with inanimate matter to a future state of Divine consciousness through Earth's "hominization".[9] He also maintained that one-cell organisms develop into metazoans or animals, but some of the members of this classification develop organisms with complex nervous systems. This group has the capability to acquire intelligence. When Homo sapiens inhabited Earth through evolution, a noosphere, the cognitive layer of existence, was created. As evolution continues, the noosphere gains coherence. Teilhard explained that this noosphere can be moved toward or constructed to be the Omega Point or the final evolutionary stage with the help of science.[10] Teilhard refers to this process as "planetization". Eventually, the noosphere gains total dominance over the biosphere and reaches a point of complete independence from tangential energy forming a metaphysical being, coined the Omega Point."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point)
Etymology
From the Wikipedia:
"Teilhard de Chardin was a paleontologist and Roman Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. In France in the 1920s, he began incorporating his theories of the universe into lectures that placed Catholicism and evolution in the same conversation. Because of these lectures, he was suspected by the Holy Office of denying the doctrine of original sin. This caused Teilhard to be exiled to China and banned from publication by Church authorities. It was not until one year after his death in 1955 that his writings were published for the world to read. His works were also supported by the writings of a group of Catholic thinkers, which includes Pope Benedict XVI. His book, The Phenomenon of Man, has been dissected by astrophysicists and cosmologists to be a theological or philosophical theory that cannot be scientifically proven. Teilhard, who was not a cosmologist, opens his books with the statement:
... "if this book is to be properly understood, it must be read not as a work on metaphysics, still less as a sort of theological essay, but purely and simply as a scientific treatise".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point)
Discussion
Teilhard de Chardin's Theory of the Omega Point
From the Wikipedia:
"According to Teilhard, evolution does not end with mankind and Earth's biosphere evolved before humans existed. He described evolution as a progression that begins with inanimate matter to a future state of Divine consciousness through Earth's "hominization". He also maintained that one-cell organisms develop into metazoans or animals, but some of the members of this classification develop organisms with complex nervous systems. This group has the capability to acquire intelligence. When Homo sapiens inhabited Earth through evolution, a noosphere, the cognitive layer of existence, was created. As evolution continues, the noosphere gains coherence. Teilhard explained that this noosphere can be moved toward or constructed to be the Omega Point or the final evolutionary stage with the help of science.[10] Teilhard refers to this process as "planetization". Eventually, the noosphere gains total dominance over the biosphere and reaches a point of complete independence from tangential energy forming a metaphysical being, coined the Omega Point.
Energy exists in two basic modes:
"Tangential Energy": energy that can be measured by physics.
"Radial Energy": spiritual energy which accumulates into a higher state as time progresses.
Teilhard defines Radial Energy as becoming more concentrated and available as it is a critical element in man's evolution. The theory applies to all forms of matter, concluding that everything with existence has some sort of life. In regard to Teilhard's The Phenomenon of Man, Peter Medawar wrote, "Teilhard's radial, spiritual, or psychic energy may be equated to 'information' or 'information content' in the sense that has been made reasonably precise by communication engineers."
Teilhard's theory is maintained by four formal properties:
Humans will escape the heat death of the universe. Current scientific understandings imply that intelligence cannot survive heat death. He theorizes that since radial energy is non-compliant with entropy, it escapes the collapses of forces at world's end.
The Omega Point does not exist within the timeline of the universe, it occurs at the exact edge of the end of time. From that point, all sequences of existence are sucked into its being.
The Omega Point can be understood as a volume shaped like a cone in which each section taken from the base to its summit decreases until it diminishes into a final point.
The volume described in the Third Property must be understood as an entity with finite boundaries.
Teilhard explains:
- "what would have become of humanity, if, by some remote chance, it had been free to spread indefinitely on an unlimited surface, that is to say, left only to the devices of its internal affinities? Something unimaginable. ... Perhaps even nothing at all, when we think of the extreme importance of the role played in its development by the forces of compression".
Teilhard calls the contributing universal energy that generates the Omega Point "forces of compression". Unlike the scientific definition, which incorporates gravity and mass, Teilhard's forces of compression sources from communication and contact between human beings. This value is limitless and directly correlated with entropy. It suggests that as humans continue to interact, consciousness evolves and grows. For the theory to occur, humans must also be bound to the finite earth. The creation of this boundary forces the world's convergence upon itself which he theorizes to result in time ending in communion with the Omega Point-God. This portion of Teilhard's thinking shows his lack of expectation for humans to engage in space travel and transcend past the borders of the planet."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point)
The Omega Point cosmology of Frank Tipler and David Deutsch
From the Wikipedia:
"Mathematical physicist Frank Tipler generalized[13] Teilhard's term Omega Point to describe what he alleges is the ultimate fate of the universe as required by the laws of physics: roughly, Tipler argues that quantum mechanics is inconsistent unless the future of every point in spacetime contains an intelligent observer to collapse the wavefunction and that the only way for this to happen is if the Universe is closed (that is, it will collapse to a single point) and yet contains observers with a "God-like" ability to perform an unbounded series of observations in finite time. Tipler's conception of the Omega Point is widely regarded as pseudoscience by mainstream science.
The originator of quantum computing, Oxford's David Deutsch, wrote about how a universal quantum computer could bring about Tipler's salvation in his 1997 book, The Fabric of Reality."