Noosphere - Sphere of Human Thought and GCP

In the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, the noosphere (sometimes spelled nöosphere) can be seen as the "sphere of human thought" being derived from the Greek νούς ("nous") meaning "mind" + σφαίρα (sfaira) meaning "sphere", in the style of "atmosphere" and "biosphere". In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements.

For Teilhard, the noosphere is best described as a sort of 'collective consciousness' of human-beings. It emerges from the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This is an extension of Teilhard's Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, added that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point—which he saw as the goal of history.

The noosphere concept of 'unification' was elaborated in popular science fiction by Julian May in the Galactic Milieu Series. It is also the reason Teilhard is often called the patron saint of the Internet.

One of the original aspects of the noosphere concept deals with evolution. Henri Bergson (1907) was one of the first to propose that evolution is 'creative' and cannot necessarily be explained solely by Darwinian natural selection. L'évolution créatrice is upheld, according to Bergson, by a constant vital force that animates life and fundamentally connects mind and body, an idea opposing the dualism of René Descartes. In 1923, C. Lloyd Morgan took this work further, elaborating on an 'emergent evolution' that could explain increasing complexity (including the evolution of mind). Morgan found that many of the most interesting changes in living things have been largely discontinuous with past evolution, and therefore did not necessarily take place through a gradual process of natural selection. Rather, evolution experiences jumps in complexity (such as the emergence of a self-reflective universe, or noosphere). Finally, the complexification of human cultures, particularly language, facilitated a quickening of evolution in which cultural evolution occurs more rapidly than biological evolution. Recent understanding of human ecosystems and of human impact on the biosphere have led to a link between the notion of sustainability with the "co-evolution" [Norgaard, 1994] and harmonization of cultural and biological evolution.

Read More:-

1. Noosphere at Wikepedia
2. Global Consciousness Project
   
3. http://noosphere.cc/ - Good Document Book to Read
4. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ - Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University
   

Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University

Someday after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will discover fire.

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  Teilhard de Chardin

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  Introduction and Plan of Global Consciousness Project (GCP)
  It is one of humanity's most enduring spiritual traditions: the idea that all life or all consciousness is interconnected. Human groups, whether ethnic, religious, or racial; as various as the Iroquois, the Sufis, and Western European Freemasons, all incorporate it into their belief structures. References to it can be found in ancient documents of the classical world, both East and West. It is a very compelling idea, spanning both millennia and the vast complexity of human cultures. Yet, as compelling as the concept is emotionally, only in recent decades has any objective evidence emerged that such a construct might be valid. Even this work, in fields as various as physics, parapsychology, and biology, has provided only suggestions, largely because the research was not conceived in global terms but, instead, focused on more limited vistas. Indeed, much of the relevant research has regarded only individual performances in experiments on anomalies such as telepathy, mind/matter interactions, and distant healing. Somewhat broader vistas are opened in studies of group resonance and morphogenetic fields.
  Until very recently, taking the kind of global real-time measurements necessary to evaluate objectively what Jung called the Collective Unconsciousness, and Teilhard de Chardin described as the Noosphere -- a sheath of intelligence for the Earth -- was not a real possibility. Two events, however, have changed this picture. The first is the development of a reliable measurement technology using Random Event Generators (REGs) linked to computers, together with soft- and hardware necessary to do very large and complex multivariate analyses on desktop machines. The second is the rise of the Internet, itself a kind of global consciousness network, albeit one linked very much to the physical world of electronics. For the first time, the objective measurement infrastructure necessary to undertake an evaluation of consciousness on a global scale is broadly accessible. This proposal describes such an effort, the Global Consciousness Project (GCP) .