Vernadsky's Vision of the Noosphere

Discussion

Via Peter Critchley:

"Vernadsky wrote that he was introduced to the concept by Édouard Le Roy’s 1927 lectures at the College of France. (Vernadsky, Vladimir: Some Words on the Noosphere) Aphorism 11. (Original Published 1944). The first use of the term was by Teilhard de Chardin in 1922 (in his Cosmogenesis). Some claim that the term originated with Édouard Le Roy rather than Teilhard de Chardin. They knew each other, in any case. (Fuchs-Kittowski, K.; Krüger, P.: The Noosphere Vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir I. Vernadsky in the Perspective of Information and of World Wide Communication; in World Futures: Vol. 50, No. 1-4, 1997. p. 768).

Stated in a couple of lines, Vernadsky’s understanding of the noosphere seems similar to Teilhard’s, described as the planetary “sphere of reason,” the new state of the biosphere. (Moiseyev, Nikita Nikolaievich: Man and the Noosphere; The noosphere represents the highest stage of biospheric development, its defining factor being the development of humankind's rational activities. (Translation of Russian Title: Petrashov, V.V.: The Beginning of Noocenology: Science of Ecosystem Restoration and the Creation of Nocenoses; Pitt, David; Samson, Paul R. (2012). The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change. Oxon: Routledge. pp. 6; Yanshin, A. L.; Yanshina, F.T.: Preface; in Vernadsky, Vladimir Ivanovich: Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon, Moscow, Nongovernmental Ecological V.I.Vernadsky Foundation, 1997, (Original translated by B.A.Starostin) p. 6.) Vernadsky But whereas Teilhard develops the theological/humanist dimensions, Vernadsky’s concept is grounded in the geological sciences. It’s interesting to pt both concepts together (which for me is the view consistent with the two concepts of God in the Hebrew Bible, Elohim and Hashem, the God of the Creation as physical universe and the God of love and personal relations). The view common to both is that human reason is active in creating the next evolutionary geological layer as part of the evolutionary chain, joining culture and nature. Some claim it was Vernadsky who introduced the concept of the biosphere into the notion of noosphere, which fits the idea of him as a pioneer in this area, grounding the idea in the natural sciences – his own field of biogeochemistry - away from theology, but it seems that Teilhard was well aware of the concept of the biosphere, developed by Edward Suess in 1875. (Levit, Georgy S.: The Biosphere and the Noosphere Theories of V.I. Vernadsky and P. Teilhard de Chardin: A Methodological Essay, International Archives on the History of Science/Archives Internationales D'Histoire des Sciences", 2000. p. 161).

There are fundamental differences between Teilhard and Vernadsky, mind – but the view of human activity becoming conscious as a geological power, capable of influencing the environment consciously from within, is similar.

Vernadsky is worth exploring on this. (As is Teilhard, whose work seems much more well-known). Vernadsky made the noosphere the third phase of the Earth’s development after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). In contrast to purely naturalist conceptions (Gaia for instance), Vernadsky underscores the way that human cognition transforms the biosophere in fundamental ways. The noosphere thus emerges as humankind comes to consciousness through the increasing mastery of physical processes. The interesting thing for me is that both thinkers were prepared to go beyond the boundaries of natural science – and hence their views risk being dismissed as ‘not scientific’ - to create overarching theoretical constructions – dare I say metaphysics – comprising philosophy, social sciences and ethics as well as evolutionary theory. (Levit, Georgy S.: The Biosphere and the Noosphere Theories of V.I. Vernadsky and P. Teilhard de Chardin: A Methodological Essay, International Archives on the History of Science/Archives Internationales D'Histoire des Sciences", 2000). I’m also interested in the factb that Vernadsky’s view, grounded in the natural sciences, converged with Teilhard’s in possessing a teleological character. Both argued for the teleological character of evolution. (Many don’t want to go there, but I read people like theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, or Robert Wright in Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, and many more, and I don’t see how they avoid teleology even if they refuse to recognise it or overtly deny it). It’s no wonder that the scientific status of the concept is questioned, given the extent to which it drew, in aspects, from Henri Bergson and his ‘Lévolution créatrice (1907), the idea that evolution is "creative" and cannot necessarily be explained solely by Darwinian natural selection. According to Bergson, this creativity is sustained by a constant vital force, animating life and connecting mind and body in a way that contradicts Cartesian dualism of One hundred years later, Stuart Kauffman proposes much the same thing in ‘Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion.’ Kauffman writes of will, consciousness, and agency as emergent within an endlessly creative universe. He claims that to be ‘God enough.’ (I’m not sure about that, since it loses transcendendence, but you can see it as an immanent view that has a lot in common with Teilhard and Vernadsky). Basically, it’s the idea that human beings are co-creators in a ceaselessly creative universe. Co-evolution. Sounds new. I would argue that Marx’s metabolic thinking is well worth exploring, not least because it brings us to mediation and the human role in evolution via specific social relations and forms in time and place. The end is the harmonization of cultural and biological evolution. I know Vernadsky most as one of the few who developed Marx’s pioneering metabolic understanding, emphasising the mediation and relation between the social metabolic order and what Marx called “the universal metabolism of nature.” I think it’s here – encompassing all the critique of political economy, praxis, agency that Marx emphasised – and the relation of ‘Nature’ where the focus should be when it comes to addressing environmental crisis. The environment is social and cultural (and moral) as well as natural, it’s the mediation that matters."

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