noospheren.
/ˈnəʊə(ʊ)sfɪə/, U.S. /ˈnoʊəˌsfɪ(ə)r/ The part of the biosphere occupied by thinking humanity; spec. (with reference to the writing of P. Teilhard de Chardin) a stage or sphere of evolutionary development characterized by (the emergence or dominance of) consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal relationships, postulated as following the stage of the establishment of human life. Also figurative.
ΚΠ
1930 Jrnl. Philos. 27 499 This amounts to imagining, above the animal biosphere and continuing it, a human sphere, the sphere of reflection, of conscious and free invention, of thought strictly speaking, in short, the sphere of mind or noosphere.
1945 Amer. Scientist 33 9 There arises the problem of the reconstruction of the biosphere in the interests of freely thinking humanity as a single totality. This new state of the biosphere..is the noösphere.
1953 J. S. Huxley Evol. in Action iv. 110 It provides a new kind of environment for life to inhabit. It needs a name of its own: following Père Teilhard de Chardin, the French paleontologist and philosopher, I shall call it the nöosphere, the world of mind.
1970 Sci. Amer. Sept. 53/3 Just before his [sc. Vernadsky's] death..he wrote..‘I think that we undergo not only a historical, but a planetary change as well. We live in a transition to the noosphere.’ By noosphere Vernadsky meant the envelope of mind that was to supersede the biosphere.
1996 Wired May 158/1 We swim in imagination and bring the noosphere alive with collective consciousness.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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