THE FORMATION OF THE NOOSPHERE [1]
A Plausible Biological Interpretation
of Human History
by
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
from the book
THE FUTURE OF MAN
New York, Harper and Row, 1969
(out of print)
This book was first published
under the title
L'Avenir de l'Homme
by
Editions du Seuil
1959
Chapter 10
Gradually, but by an irresistible process (since and through
the work of Auguste Comte, Cournot, Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl and many
others) the organic is tending to supersede the juridical
approach in the concepts and formulations of sociologists. A
sense of collectivity, arising in our minds out of the
evolutionary sense, has imposed a framework of entirely new
dimensions upon all our thinking; so that Mankind has come to
present itself to our gaze, less and less as a haphazard and
extrinsic association of individuals, and increasingly as a
biological entity wherein, in some sort, the proceedings and the
necessities of the universe in movement are furthered and achieve
their culmination. We feel that the relation between Society and
Social organism is no longer a matter of symbolism, but must be
treated in realistic terms. But the question then arises as to
how, in this shifting of values, this passage from the juridical
to the organic, we may correctly apply the analogy. How are we
to escape from metaphor without falling into the trap of
establishing absurd and over-simplified parallels which would
make of the human species no more than a kind of composite,
living animal? This is the difficulty which modern sociology
encounters.
It is with the idea and in the hope of advancing towards a
solution of the problem, that I here venture, basing my argument
on the widest possible zoological and biological grounds, to put
forward a coherent view of the 'thinking Earth,' in which I
believe we may find, undistorted but yet embodying the
corrections required by a change of order, the whole process of
Life and of vitalization.
To the natural scientist, Mankind offers a profoundly
enigmatic object of study. Anatomically, as Linnaeus perceived,
Man differs so little from the other higher primates that, in
strict terms of the criteria normally applied in zoological
classification, his group represents no more than a very small
offshoot, certainly far less than an Order, within the framework
of the category as a whole. But in 'biospherical' terms, if I
may be allowed the word, man's place on earth is not only
predominant but, to a certain extent, exclusive among living
creatures. The small family of hominids, the last shoot to
emerge from the main stem of Evolution, has, of itself, achieved
a degree of expansion equal to, or even greater than, that of the
greatest vertebrate layers (reptile or mammal) that ever
inhabited the earth. Moreover, at the rate it is going, we can
already foresee the day when it will have abolished or
domesticated all other forms of animal and even plant life.
What does this mean?
I believe that the paradox will disappear and the
contradictions will be reconciled (with the immediate prospect of
a vast field of progress for the new sociology), if we adopt the
following premises:
(a) We must first give their place, in the mechanism of
biological evolution, to the special forces released by the
psychic phenomenon of hominization;
(b) Secondly we must enlarge our approach to encompass the
formation, taking place before our eyes and arising out of this
factor of hominization, of a particular biological entity such as
has never before existed on earth -- the growth, outside and
above the biosphere [2], of an added planetary layer, an envelope
of thinking substance to which, for the sake of convenience and
symmetry, I have given the name of Noosphere [3].
Let us pursue the matter by successively examining (without
at any time leaving the plane of scientific thought):
1. the birth (or, what amounts to the same thing, the
zoological structure);
2. the anatomy;
3. the physiology;
4. finally, the principal phases of growth
of the Noosphere.
1. Birth and Zoological Structure of the Noosphere
I have referred to the almost contradictory aspect which the
section 'homo' in the order of primates assumes in the eyes of
natural scientists: that of a single family suddenly emerging,
at the end of the Tertiary era, to achieve the dimensions of a
zoological layer in itself.
If we are to appreciate this strange phenomenon, we must
look back over the normal development of living forms before the
coming of man. It can be characterized in two words: from its
first beginnings, it never ceased to be 'phyletic' and
'dispersive.' Phyletic, in the first place: every species (or
group of species) formed a sort of shoot (or phylum) which was
obliged to evolve 'orthogenetically' [4] along certain prescribed
lines (reduction or adaptation of limbs, complication of teeth,
increased specialization as carnivores or herbivores, runners,
burrowers, swimmers, flyers, etc.); and secondly, dispersive,
since the different phyla separated at certain points of
proliferation, certain 'knots' which we may suppose to be periods
of particularly active mutation [5]. Until the coming of man,
the pattern of the Tree of Life was always that of a fan, a
spread of morphological radiations diverging more and more, each
radiation culminating in a new 'knot' and breaking into a fan of
its own.
But, at the human level, a radical change, seemingly due to
the spiritual phenomenon of Reflection, overtook this law of
development. It is generally accepted that, what distinguished
man psychologically from other living creatures, is the power,
acquired by his consciousness, of turning in upon itself. The
animal knows, it has been said; but only man, among animals,
knows that he knows. This faculty has given birth to a host of
new attributes in men -- freedom of choice, foresight, the
ability to plan and to construct, and many others. So much is
clear to everyone. But what has perhaps not been sufficiently
noted is that, still by virtue of this power of Reflection,
living hominized elements become capable (indeed are under an
irresistible compulsion) of drawing close to one another, of
communicating, finally of uniting. The centers of consciousness,
acquiring autonomy as they emerge into the sphere of reflection,
tend to escape from their own phylum, which granulates into a
line of individuals. Instead, they pass tangentially into a
field of attraction which forces one towards another, fiber to
fiber, phylum to phylum: with the result that the entire system
of zoological radiations which, in the ordinary course, would
have culminated in a knot and a fanning out of new divergent
lines, now tends to fold in upon itself. In time, with the
reflexion of the individual upon himself, there comes an
inflection, then a clustering together of the living shoots, soon
to be followed (because of the biological advantage which the
group gains by its greater cohesion) by the spread of the living
complex thus constituted over the whole surface of the globe.
The critical point of reflexion for the biological unit becomes
the critical point of 'inflexion' for the phyla, which in turn
becomes the point of 'circumflexion' (if I may use the word) for
the whole sheaf of inward-folding phyla. Or, if you prefer, the
reflective coiling of the individual upon himself leads to the
coiling of the phyla upon each other, which in turn leads to the
coiling of the whole system about the closed convexity of the
celestial body which carries us. Or, we may talk, in yet other
terms, of psychic centration, phyletic intertwining, and
planetary envelopment: three genetically associated occurrences
which, taken together, give birth to the Noosphere.
Viewed in this aspect, entirely borne out by experience, the
collective human organism, which the economists so hazily
envisage, emerges decisively from the mists of speculation to
take its place and assume the brilliance of a clearly defined
star of the first magnitude in the zoological sky. Until this
point was reached, Nature, in her generalized effort of
'complexification,' to which I shall return later, had failed for
lack of suitable material to achieve any grouping of individuals
outside the family structure (the termite nest, the ant-hill, the
hive). With man, thanks to the extraordinary agglutinative
property of thought, she has at last been able to achieve,
throughout an entire living group, a total synthesis of which the
process is still clearly apparent, if we trouble to look, in the
'scaled' structure of the modern human world. Anthropologists,
sociologists, and historians have long noted, without being very
well able to account for it, the enveloping and concretionary
nature of the innumerable ethnic and cultural layers whose
growth, expansion, and rhythmic overlapping endow humanity with
its present aspect of extreme variety in unity. This 'bulbary'
appearance becomes instantly and luminously clear if, as
suggested above, we regard the human group, in zoological terms,
as simply a normal sheaf of phyla in which, owing to the
emergence of a powerful field of attraction, the fundamental
divergent tendency of the evolutionary radiations is overcome by
a stronger force inducing them to converge. In present day
mankind, within (as I call it) the Noosphere, we are for the
first time able to contemplate, at the very top of the
evolutionary tree, the result that can be produced by a synthesis
not merely of individuals, but of entire zoological shoots.
Thus, we find ourselves in the presence, in actual
possession, of the super organism we have been seeking, of whose
existence we were intuitively aware. The collective mankind,
which the sociologists needed for the furtherance of their
speculations and formulations, now appears scientifically
defined, manifesting itself in its proper time and place, like an
object entirely new and yet awaited in the sky of life. It
remains for us to observe the world by the light it sheds, which
throws into astonishing relief the great ensemble of everyday
phenomena with which we have always lived, without perceiving
their reality, their immediacy, or their vastness.
2. Anatomy of the Noosphere
It may be said, speaking in very general terms, that in
asserting the zoological nature of the Noosphere, we confirm the
sociologists' view of human institutions as organic. Once the
exceptional but fundamentally biological nature of the collective
human complex is accepted, nothing prevents us (provided we take
into account the modifications which have occurred in the
dimensions in which we are working) from treating as authentic
organs, the diverse social organisms which have gradually evolved
in the course of the history of the human race. As soon as
mankind, from the nature of its origin, presents itself to our
experience as a true super-body, the internal connections of this
body, by reason of homogeneity, can only be treated and
understood as super-organs and super-members. Thus, for example
(due allowance being made for the change of scale and
environment), it becomes legitimate to talk in the sphere of
economics of the existence and development of a circulatory or a
nutritional system applicable to Mankind as a whole.
That we must proceed slowly and critically in this attempt
to construct an 'anatomy' of society is evident. Used without
discernment and a profound knowledge of biology, the procedure is
in danger of lapsing into puerile and sterile subtleties. But,
progressively pursued, and proceeding from certain major fields
of knowledge, the method shows itself to be both fruitful and
illuminating. This is what I shall seek to demonstrate in the
three spheres of culture, machinery, and research, by
successively 'dissecting' first the hereditary, then the
mechanical, and finally the cerebral apparatus of the Noosphere.
(a) The Apparatus of Heredity
One of the paradoxes attaching to the human species, a cause
of some bitterness among biologists, is that every man comes into
the world as defenseless, and as incapable of finding his way
single-handed in our civilization, as the newborn Sinanthropus a
hundred thousand years ago. As Jean Rostand [6] has remarked,
during the many centuries man has strived to improve himself, the
fruits of his labors have brought about no organic change in him;
they have not affected his chromosomes. So much so, the author
goes on to imply, that all the advances on which we so pride
ourselves, remain biologically precarious, superficial, or even
exterior to ourselves. There is much that might be said about
this. But, let us pass over the question of whether we have not
undergone some modification, even in our chromosomes, since the
era of the pre-Hominids, or even that of Cro-Magnon man. Let us
concede, provisionally, that we have developed no hereditary
trait, in that period, rendering us more innately capable of
perception and movement in the new dimensions of society, space,
and time. How does this affect our appreciation and evaluation
of human progress? I shall show that the answer is splendid and
highly encouraging -- provided we do not lose sight of the
organic reality of the Noosphere.
'Separate the new born child from human society,' you may
say, 'and you will see how weak he is!' But, surely it is clear
that this act of isolation is precisely what must not be done,
and indeed cannot be done. From the moment when, as I have said,
the phyletic strands began to reach towards one another, weaving
the first outlines of the Noosphere, a new matrix, co-extensive
with the whole human group, was formed about the newly born human
child -- a matrix out of which he cannot be wrenched without
incurring mutilation in the most physical core of his biological
being. Traditions of every kind, hoarded and manifested in
gesture and language, in schools, libraries, museums, bodies of
law and religion, philosophy and science -- everything that
accumulates, arranges itself, recurs, and adds to itself,
becoming the collective memory of the human race -- all this we
may see as no more than an outer garment, an epiphenomenon
precariously superimposed upon all the other edifices of Nature
(the only truly organic ones, as it may appear). But, it is
precisely this optical illusion which we have to overcome if our
realism is to reach to the heart of the matter. It is
undoubtedly true that, before Man, hereditary characteristics
were transmitted principally through the reproductive cells.
But, after the coming of man, another kind of heredity shows
itself and becomes predominant; one which was indeed
foreshadowed and essayed long before man, among the highest forms
of insects and vertebrates [7]. This is the heredity of example
and education. In Man, as though by a stroke of genius on the
part of Life, and in accord with the grand phenomenon of phyletic
coiling, heredity, hitherto primarily chromosomic (that is to
say, carried by the genes) becomes primarily 'Noospheric' --
transmitted, that is to say, by the surrounding environment. In
this new form, and having lost nothing of its physical reality,
(indeed, as much superior to its first state as the Noosphere is
superior to the simple, isolated phylum), it acquires, by
becoming exterior to the individual, an incomparable substance
and capacity. For, let me put this question: What system of
chromosomes would be as capable as our immense educational system
of indefinitely storing and infallibly preserving the huge array
of truths and systematized technical knowledge which, steadily
accumulating, represents the patrimony of mankind?
Exteriorization, enrichment: we must not lose sight of
these two words. We shall come upon them again, quite unchanged,
when we turn to consider the machine.
(b) The Mechanical Apparatus
The fact was noted long ago [8]: what has enabled man
zoologically to emerge and triumph upon earth, is that he has
avoided the anatomical mechanization of his body. In all other
animals we find a tendency, irresistible and clearly apparent,
for the living creature to convert into tools its own limbs, its
teeth, and even its face. We see paws turned into pincers, paws
equipped with hooves for running, burrowing paws and muzzles,
winged paws, beaks, tusks, and so on -- innumerable adaptations
giving birth to as many phyla, and each ending in a blind alley
of specialization. On this dangerous slope, leading to organic
imprisonment, Man alone has pulled up in time. Having arrived at
the tetrapod stage, he contrived to stay there without further
reducing the versatility of his limbs. Possessing hands as well
as intelligence, and being able, in consequence, to devise
artificial instruments and multiply them indefinitely without
becoming somatically involved, he has succeeded, while increasing
and boundlessly extending his mechanical efficiency, in
preserving intact his freedom of choice and power of reason.
The significance and biological function of the tool, at
last separated from the limb, has, as I way saying, long been
recognized; and it has long been realized that the tool
separated from Man develops a kind of autonomous vitality [9].
We have passive machines giving birth to the active machine,
which in turn is followed by the automatic machine. Those are
the main classifications; but, within each classification, what
an immense proliferation there is of branches and offshoots, each
endowed with a sort of evolutionary potential, irresistible both
logically and biologically! We have only to think of the
automobile and the airplane.
All this has been noted and often said. But, what has not
yet been sufficiently taken into account, although it explains
everything, is the extent to which this process of mechanization
is a collective affair, and the way in which it finally creates,
on the periphery of the human race, an organism that is
collective in its nature and amplitude.
Let us consider this.
With and since the coming of Man, as we have seen, a new law
of Nature has come into force -- that of convergence. The
convergence of the phyla both ensues from, and of itself leads
to, the coming together of individuals within the peculiarly
'attaching' atmosphere created by the phenomenon of Reflexion.
And, out of this convergence, as I have said, there arises a very
real social inheritance, produced by the synthetic recording of
human experience. But, if we look for it, we may observe
precisely the same phenomenon in the case of the machine. Every
new tool conceived in the course of history, although it may have
been invented in the first place by an individual, has rapidly
become the instrument of all men, and not merely by being passed
from hand to hand, spreading from one man to his neighbor, but by
being adopted corporatively by all men together. What started as
an individual creation has been immediately and automatically
transformed into a global, quasi-autonomous possession of the
entire mass of men. We see this from prehistoric times, and we
see it with a vivid clarity in the present era of industrial
explosion. Consider the locomotive, the dynamo, the airplane,
the cinema, the radio -- anything. Can there be any doubt that
these innumerable appliances are born and grow, successively and
in unison, from roots established in an existing mechanical
world-state? For a long time past, there have been neither
isolated inventors nor machines. To an increasing extent, every
machine comes into being as a function of every other machine;
and, again to an increasing extent, all the machines on earth,
taken together, tend to form a single, vast, organized mechanism.
Necessarily following the inflexive tendency of the zoological
phyla, the mechanical phyla in their turn curve inward in the
case of man, thus accelerating and multiplying their own growth
and forming a single gigantic network girdling the earth. And
the basis, the inventive core of this vast apparatus, what is it,
if not the thinking center of the Noosphere?
When Homo faber came into being, the first rudimentary tool
was born as an appendage of the human body. Today, the tool has
been transformed into a mechanized envelope, coherent within
itself and immensely varied, appertaining to all mankind. From
being somatic, it has become 'noospheric.' And, just as the
individual at the outset was enabled by the tool to preserve and
develop his first, elemental psychic potentialities, so today the
Noosphere, disgorging the machine from its innermost organic
recesses, is capable of, and in process of, developing a brain of
its own.
(c) The Cerebral Apparatus
Between the human brain, with its milliards of
interconnected nerve cells, and the apparatus of social thought,
with its millions of individuals thinking collectively, there is
an evident kinship which biologists of the stature of Julian
Huxley have not hesitated to examine and expand on critical lines
[10]. On the one hand, we have a single brain, formed of nervous
nuclei, and on the other, a Brain of brains. It is true that,
between these two organic complexes, a major difference exists.
Whereas, in the case of the individual brain, thought emerges
from a system of non-thinking nervous fibers; in the case of the
collective brain, each separate unit is in itself an autonomous
center of reflection. If the comparison is to be a just one, we
must, at every point of resemblance, take this difference into
account. But, when all allowance is made, the fact remains that
the analogies between the two systems are so numerous, and so
compelling, that reason forbids us to regard the parallel as
either purely superficial, or a mere matter of chance. Let us
take a rapid glance at the structure and functioning of what
might be termed the 'cerebroid' organ of the Noosphere.
First the structure: and here I must turn back to the
machine. I have said that, thanks to the machine, Man has
contrived both severally and collectively to prevent the best of
himself from being absorbed in purely physiological and
functional uses, as has happened to other animals. But, in
addition to its protective note, how can we fail to see the
machine as playing a constructive part in the creation of a truly
collective consciousness? It is not merely a matter of the
machine which liberates, relieving both individual and collective
thought of the trammels which hinder its progress, but also of
the machine which creates, helping to assemble, and to
concentrate in the form of an ever more deeply penetrating
organism, all the reflective elements upon earth.
I am thinking, of course, in the first place, of the
extraordinary network of radio and television communications
which, perhaps anticipating the direct syntonization of brains
through the mysterious power of telepathy, already link us all in
a sort of 'etherized' universal consciousness.
But, I am also thinking of the insidious growth of those
astonishing electronic computers which, pulsating with signals at
the rate of hundreds of thousands a second, not only relieve our
brains of tedious and exhausting work but, because they enhance
the essential (and too little noted) factor of 'speed of
thought,' are also paving the way for a revolution in the sphere
of research. And, there are other forms of technical equipment,
such as the electronic microscope, whereby our sensory vision,
the principal source of our ideas, has been enabled to leap the
optical gap between the cell and the direct observation of large
molecules.
There is a school of philosophy which smiles disdainfully at
these and kindred forms of progress. 'Commercial machines,' we
hear them say, 'machines for people in a hurry, designed to gain
time and money.' One is tempted to call them blind, since they
fail to perceive that all these material instruments, ineluctably
linked in their birth and development, are finally nothing less
than the manifestation of a particular kind of super-Brain,
capable of attaining mastery over some super-sphere in the
universe and in the realm of thought. 'Everything for the
individual!' -- such was the reaffirmation of my brilliant
friend, Gaylord Simpson [11], in a recent outburst of anti-
totalitarian fervor. But, let us grasp this point clearly. No
doubt it is true, scientifically speaking, that no distinct
center of superhuman consciousness has yet appeared on earth, (at
least in the living world), for which it may be claimed or
predicted that, one day, it will exercise a centralizing
function, in relation to associated human thought, similar to the
role of the individual 'I' in relation to the cells of the brain.
But, that is far from saying that, influenced by the links which
unite them, our grouped minds working together are not capable of
achieving results which no one member of the group could achieve
alone, and from which every individual within the collective
process benefits 'integrally,' although still not in the total
sense.
We have only to consider any of the new concepts and
intuitions which, particularly during the past century, have
become or are in the process of becoming the indestructible
keystones and fabric of our thought -- the idea of the atom,
for example, or of organic Time or Evolution. It is surely
obvious that no man on earth could alone have evolved them; no
one man, thinking by himself, can encompass, master, or exhaust
them. Yet, every man on earth shares, in himself, in the
universal heightening of consciousness promoted by the existence
in our minds of these new concepts of matter and new dimensions
of cosmic reality. It is not a question of simple repetitive
'summation' but of synthesis; not, it is true (at least not yet,
here below), synthesis pushed to the point where it calls into
being some new kind of autonomous super-center in the depths of
the synthesized; but a synthesis which at least suffices to
erect, as though it were a vault above our heads, a sphere of
mutually reinforced consciousness, the seat, support, and
instrument of super-vision and super-ideas. No doubt, everything
proceeds from the individual and, in the first instance, depends
on the individual; but, it is on a level higher than the
individual that everything achieves its fulfillment.
We have touched upon the apparatus of heredity, machinery,
and mind. It would be rash and often absurd to attempt to pursue
further, and in detail, the comparison between the organism of
the individual and that of the Noosphere. But, the fact that the
general line of analogy is valid and fruitful seems to me to be
definitely proved by the very remarkable fact that these three
systems, taken in conjunction, not only form a complementary and
coherent whole, consistent within itself, but, which is even more
easy of demonstration, that this whole is capable of breaking
into motion and of working -- that it functions, in a word.
3. The Physiology of the Noosphere
One of the most impressive effects of the power of
collective vision, which is conferred upon us by the formation of
a common brain, is the perception of 'great slow movements,' so
vast and slow that they are only observable over immense
stretches of time. The currents that give birth to sidereal
systems; the folds and upthrusts that form mountains and
continents; the ebb and flow within the biosphere -- in each
case, what we had supposed to be the extreme of immobility and
stability is discovered to be a state of fundamental and
irresistible movement.
So it is with the Noosphere.
I have already attempted a sort of anatomy of the major
organs of the Noosphere. It remains for me to show that these
separate parts, planetary in their dimensions, are not designed
to remain in a state of rest. The formidable wheels turn, and in
their combined action, hidden forces are engendered which
circulate throughout the gigantic system. What goes on around us
in the human mass is not merely a flurry of disordered movement,
as in a gas; something is purposefully stirring, as in a living
being.
Let us try to gain some understanding of this vast internal
process, of which we are all a part and to which we all
contribute, almost without knowing it.
At the heart of the entire movement, like the mainspring of
a clock, there reappears, in identifiable form, what we have
termed the inflection of human stems upon themselves. It was of
this mysteriously compelled infolding, as I have said, that the
human race was born. I will now add that it is through the
continued operations of the same movement that the race persists
and functions. Indeed, we have only to open our eyes to be, as
it were, spellbound by the dazzling vision, the spectacle of
human shoots caught in the combined play of irresistible forces
which, slowly but surely, continue to close and coil about us.
Despite the havoc of war, the population on the limited surface
of this planet which bears us, is increasing in almost
geometrical progression; while, at the same time, the scope of
each human molecule, in terms of movement, information, and
influence, is becoming rapidly co-extensive with the whole
surface of the globe. A state of tightening compression, in
short; but, even more, thanks to the biological intermingling
developed to its uttermost extent by the appearance of
Reflection, a state of organized compenetration, in which each
element is linked with every other. No one can deny that a
network (a world network) of economic and psychic affiliations is
being woven at ever increasing speed which envelops and
constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every
day that passes, it becomes a little more impossible for us to
act or think otherwise than collectively.
What is the significance of this multiform embrace, both
external and internal, against which we struggle in vain? Can it
mean that, caught in the ramifications of a sightless mechanism,
we are destined to perish by stifling each other? No. For, as
the coil grows tighter and the tension rises, the forces of
super-compression in the vast generator find an effective outlet.
We begin to catch sight of it in the study of an all too
familiar phenomenon, disquieting in appearance, but in fact
highly revealing and reassuring -- the phenomenon of
unemployment. Owing to the extraordinarily rapid development of
the machine, a rapidly increasing number of workers, running into
tens of millions, are out of work. The experts gaze in dismay at
this economic apparatus, their own creation, which, instead of
absorbing all the units of human energy with which they furnish
it, rejects an increasing number, as though the machine they
devised were working to defeat their purpose. Economists are
horrified by the growing number of idle hands. Why do they not
look a little more to biology for guidance and enlightenment? In
its progress through a million centuries, mounting from the
depths of the unconscious to consciousness, when has Life
proceeded otherwise than by releasing psychic forces through the
medium of the mechanisms it has devised? We have only to
consider the evolution of the nervous system in the animal
series, proceeding by chronological stages over a great period of
time. Or, let the theorists consider themselves. How are they
capable of reasoning at all, if not because, within them, their
visceral system has been taught to function automatically, while
around them society is so well organized that they have both the
strength and the leisure to calculate and reflect? What is true
for each individual man is precisely what is happening at this
moment on the higher level of mankind. Like a heavenly body that
heats as it contracts, such, and in a twofold respect, is the
Noosphere: first, in intensity, the degree in which its tension
and psychic temperature are heightened by the coming together and
mutual stimulation of thinking centers throughout its extent;
and also quantitatively, through the growing number of people
able to use their brains, because they are free from the need to
labor with their hands. So that, to attempt to suppress
unemployment by incorporating the unemployed in the machine would
be against the purpose of Nature and a biological absurdity. The
Noosphere can function only by releasing more and more spiritual
energy with an ever higher potential.
To all this, you may remark as follows: 'Very well; let us
agree that the combined effect of phyletic intertwining and
mechanical progress causes life to boil over. But, in that case,
and surely it is the root of the matter, how are we to canalize
and use the rising tide of liberated consciousness that is still
so crude and unformed?' My answer is: 'By transforming it.'
And, at this point, having invited you to reflect upon the
phenomenon of unemployment, I will draw your attention to another
and no less universal phenomenon, equally characteristic of the
present age -- the phenomenon of research.
Understanding, discovery, invention .... from the first
awakening of his reflective consciousness, Man has been possessed
by the demon of discovery; but, until a very recent epoch, this
profound need remained latent, diffused, and unorganized in the
human mass. In every past generation, true seekers, those by
vocation or profession, are to be found; but, in the past, they
were no more than a handful of individuals, generally isolated,
and of a type that was virtually abnormal -- the 'inquisitive.'
Today, without our having noticed it, the situation is entirely
changed. In fields embracing every aspect of physical matter,
life, and thought, the research workers are to be numbered in the
hundreds of thousands, and they no longer work in isolation, but
in teams endowed with penetrative powers that, it seems, nothing
can withstand. In this respect, too, the movement is becoming
generalized and is accelerating to the point where we must be
blind not to see in it an essential trend in human affairs.
Research which, until yesterday, was a luxury pursuit, is in the
process of becoming a major, indeed the principal function of
humanity. As to the significance of this great event, I, for my
part, can see only one way to account for it. It is that the
enormous surplus of free energy released by the in-folding of the
Noosphere is destined, by a natural evolutionary process, to flow
into the construction and functioning of what I have called its
'Brain.' As in the case of all the organisms preceding it, but
on an immense scale, humanity is in the process of
'cerebralizing' itself. And our proper biological course, in
making use of what we call our leisure, is to devote it to a new
kind of work on a higher plane: that is to say, to a general and
concerted effort of vision. The Noosphere, in short, is a
stupendous thinking machine.
It is in this sense alone, as I believe, that the horizon
appears and we can gain a clear view of the human world
surrounding us. In harmony with the cosmic impulse which leads
to the constant disintegration of atoms and the attendant release
of energy, Life (though probably localized on a few rare planets)
compels us increasingly to view it as an underlying current, in
the flow of which matter tends to order itself upon itself, with
the emergence of consciousness. On the one hand, we have
physical radiation bound up with disintegration; and, on the
other hand, psychic radiation bound up with an ordered
aggregation of the stuff of the universe. In the eyes of
nineteenth century science, the interiorization of the world,
leading to the phenomenon of Reflection, might still pass for an
accident and an anomaly. We now see it to be a clearly defined
process, coextensive with the whole of reality. Complexification
due to the growth of consciousness, or consciousness the outcome
of complexity: experimentally, the two terms are inseparable.
Like a pair of related quantities, they vary simultaneously. And
surely, it is within this generalized cosmic process that the
Noosphere, a particular and extreme case, has its natural place
and takes its shape: the maximum of complication, represented by
phyletic in-folding, and in consequence the maximum of
consciousness, emerging from the system of individual brains,
coordinated and mutually supporting. And, this is exactly what
was to be expected.
But, it is assuredly a remarkable coincidence that, in
justifying the organic interpretation of the Phenomenon of Man,
as we have sought to do, we should also be paving the way for a
reasonable forecast as to our future destiny, and the fate which
is reserved for us at the end of Time.
4. The Phases and Future of the Noosphere
We have found it possible to express the social totalization
which we are undergoing in terms of a clearly identifiable
biological process. Proceeding from this, we may surely look
into the future and predict the course of the trajectory we are
describing. Once we have accepted that the formation of a
collective human organism, a Noosphere, conforms to the general
law of recurrence, which leads to the heightening of
Consciousness in the universe as a function of complexity, a vast
prospect opens before us. To what regions and through what
phases may we suppose that the extension of the rising curve of
hominization will carry us?
Immediately confronting us (indeed, already in progress) we
have what may be called a 'phase of planetization.'
It can truly be said, no doubt, that the human group
succeeded long ago in covering the face of the earth and that,
over a long period, its state of zoological ubiquity has tended
to be transformed into an organized aggregate. But, it must be
clear that the transformation is only now reaching its point of
full maturity. Let us glance over the main stages of this long
history of aggregation. First, in the depths of the past, we
find a thin scattering of hunting groups spread here and there
throughout the Ancient World. At a later stage, some fifteen
thousand years ago, we see a second scattering, very much more
dense and clearly defined: that of agricultural groups installed
in fertile valleys -- centers of social life where man, arrived
at a state of stability, achieved the expansive powers which were
to enable him to invade the New World. Then, only seven or eight
thousand years ago, there came the first civilizations, each
covering a large part of a continent. These were succeeded by
the real empires. And so on ... patches of humanity growing
steadily larger, overlapping, often absorbing one another,
thereafter to break apart and again reform in still larger
patches. As we view this process -- the spreading, thickening,
and irresistible coalescence -- can we fail to perceive its
eventual outcome? The last blank spaces have vanished from the
map of mankind. There is contact everywhere, and how close it
has become! Today, embedded in the economic and psychic network
which I have described, two great human blocks alone remain
confronting one another. Is it not inevitable that, in one way
or another, these two will eventually coalesce? Preceded by a
tremor, a wave of 'shared impulse' extending to the very depth of
the social and ethnic masses, in their need and claim to
participate, without distinction of class or color, in the onward
march of human affairs, the final act is already visibly
preparing. Although the form is not yet discernible, mankind
tomorrow will awaken to a 'pan-organized' world.
But, and we must make no mistake about this, there will be
an essential difference, a difference of order, between the
unitary state towards which we are moving, and everything we have
hitherto known. The greatest empires in history have never
covered more than fragments of the earth. What will be the
specifically new manifestations which we have to look for in the
transition to totality? Until now, we have never seen mind
manifest itself on this planet, except in separated groups and in
the static state. What sort of current will be generated, what
unknown territory will be opened up, when the circuit is suddenly
completed?
I believe that what is now being shaped in the bosom of
planetized humanity, is essentially a rebounding of evolution
upon itself. We all know about the real or imaginary projectiles
whose thrust is renewed by the firing of a series of staged
rockets. Some such procedure, it seems to me, is what Life is
preparing at this moment, to accomplish the supreme, ultimate
leap. The first stage was the elaboration of lower organisms, up
to and including Man, by the use and irrational combination of
elementary sources of energy received or released by the planet.
The second stage is the super-evolution of man, individually and
collectively, by the use of refined forms of energy
scientifically harnessed and applied in the bosom of the
Noosphere, thanks to the coordinated efforts of all men working
reflectively and unanimously upon themselves. Who can say
whither, coiled back upon our own organism, our combined
knowledge of the atom, of hormones, of the cell, and the laws of
heredity will take us? Who can say what forces may be released,
what radiations, what new arrangements never hitherto attempted
by Nature, what formidable powers we may henceforth be able to
use, for the first time in the history of the world? This is
Life setting out upon a second adventure from the springboard it
established when it created humankind.
But all this is no more than the outward face of the
phenomenon. In becoming planetized, humanity is acquiring new
physical powers which will enable it to super-organize matter.
And, even more important, is it not possible that, by the direct
converging of its members, it will be able, as though by
resonance, to release psychic powers whose existence is still
unsuspected? I have already spoken of the recent emergence of
certain new faculties in our minds, the sense of genetic duration
and the sense of collectivity. Inevitably, as a natural
consequence, this awakening must enhance in us, from all sides, a
generalized sense of the organic, through which the entire
complex of inter-human and inter-cosmic relations will become
charged with an immediacy, an intimacy, and a realism such as has
long been dreamed of and apprehended by certain spirits
particularly endowed with the 'sense of the universal,' but which
has never yet been collectively applied. And it is in the depths
and by grace of this new inward sphere, the attribute of
planetized Life, that an event seems possible which has hitherto
been incapable of realization: I mean the pervasion of the human
mass by the power of sympathy. It may, in part, be passive
sympathy, a communication of mind and spirit that will make the
phenomenon of telepathy, still sporadic and haphazard, both
general and normal. But, above all, it will be a state of active
sympathy, in which each separate human element, breaking out of
its insulated state under the impulse of the high tensions
generated in the Noosphere, will emerge into a field of
prodigious affinities, which we may already conjecture in theory.
For, if the power of attraction between simple atoms is so great,
what may we not expect if similar bonds are contracted between
human molecules? Humanity, as I have said, is building its
composite brain beneath our eyes. May it not be that tomorrow,
through the logical and biological deepening of the movement
drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the
ultimate wholeness of its powers of unification can never be
fully achieved? To put it in other words, must not the
constructive developments now taking place within the Noosphere,
in the realm of sight and reason, necessarily also penetrate to
the sphere of feeling? The idea may seem fantastic when one
looks at our present world, still dominated by the forces of
hatred and repulsion. But, is not this simply because we refuse
to heed the admonitions of science, which is daily proving to us,
in every field, that seemingly impossible changes become easy and
even inevitable, as soon as there is a change in the order of the
dimensions?
To me, two things, at least, now seem certain. The first is
that, following the state of collective organization we have
already achieved, the process of planetization can only advance
ever further in the direction of growing unanimity. And, the
second is that this growth of unanimity, being of its nature
convergent, cannot continue indefinitely without reaching the
natural limit of its course. Every cone has an apex. In the
case of this human aggregation, how shall we seek, not to
imagine, but to define the supreme point of coalescence? In
terms of the strictly phenomenal viewpoint which I have adopted
throughout this paper, it seems to me that the following may be
said:
What, at the very beginning, made the first man was, as we
know, the heightening of the individual consciousness to the
point where it acquired the power of Reflection. And, the
measure of human progress during the centuries which followed is,
as I have sought to show, the increase of this reflective power
through the interaction, or conjugated thought, of conscious
minds working upon one another. Well, what will finally crown
and limit collective humanity at the ultimate stage of its
evolution, is and must be, by reason of continuity and
homogeneity, the establishment of a focal point at the heart of
the reflective apparatus as a whole.
If we concede this, the whole of human history appears as a
progress between two critical points: from the lowest point of
elementary consciousness, to the ultimate noospherical point of
Reflection. In biological terms, humanity will have completed
itself and fully achieved its internal equilibrium only when it
is psychically centered upon itself (which may yet take several
million years).
In a final effort of thought, let us remove ourselves to
that ultimate summit where, in the remote future, but seen from
the present, the tide which bears us reaches its culmination. Is
there anything further to be discerned beyond that last peak
etched against the horizon? Yes and no.
In the first place, no, because, at that mysterious pole
crowning our ascent, the compass that has guided us runs amok.
It was by the law of 'consciousness and complexity' that we set
our course: a consciousness becoming ever more centered,
emerging from the heart of an increasingly vast system of more
numerous and better organized elements. But, now we are faced
with an entirely new situation: for the first time, we have no
multiple material under our hands. Unless, as seems infinitely
improbable, we are destined by contact with other thinking
planets, across the abysses of space and time, some day to become
integrated within an organized complex composed of a number of
Noospheres, humanity, having reached maturity, will remain alone,
face to face with itself. And, at the same time, our law of
recurrence, based on the play of interrelated syntheses, will
have ceased to operate.
So, in one sense, it all seems to be over; as though,
having reached its final point of Noospheric Reflexion, the
cosmic impulse towards consciousness has become exhausted,
condemned to sink back into the state of disintegration
implacably imposed on it by the laws of stellar physics. But, in
another sense, nothing will be ended. For, at this point, and at
the height of its powers, something else comes into operation, a
primary attribute of Reflection concerning which we have hitherto
said nothing -- the will to survive. In reflecting upon
itself, the individual consciousness acquires the formidable
property of foreseeing the future, that is to say, death. And,
at the same time, it knows that it is psychologically impossible
for it to continue to work in pursuance of the purposes of Life
unless something, the best of the work, is preserved from total
destruction. In this resides the whole problem of action. We
have not yet taken sufficient account of the fact that this
demand for the Absolute, not always easily discernible in the
isolated human unit, is one of the impulses which grow and are
intensified in the Noosphere. Applied to the individual, the
idea of total extinction may not, at first sight, appall us;
but, extended to humanity as a whole, it revolts and sickens us.
The fact is that, the more Humanity becomes aware of its
duration, its number, and its potentialities -- and also of the
enormous burden it must bear in order to survive -- the more
does it realize that, if all this labor is to end in nothing,
then we have been cheated and can only rebel. In a planetized
Humanity, the insistence upon irreversibility becomes a specific
requisite of action; and it can only grow and continue to grow
as Life reveals itself as being ever more rich, an ever heavier
load. So that, paradoxically, it is at that ultimate point of
centration which renders it cosmically unique, that is to say,
apparently incapable of any further synthesis, that the Noosphere
will have become charged to the fullest extent with psychic
energies to impel it forward in yet another advance ....
And, what can this mean, except that, like those planetary
orbits which seem to traverse our solar system without remaining
within it, the curve of consciousness, pursuing its course of
growing complexity, will break through the material framework of
Time and Space to escape somewhere towards an ultra-center of
unification and consistence, where there will finally be
assembled, and in detail, everything that is irreplaceable and
incommunicable in the world.
And, it is here, an inevitable intrusion in terms of
biology, and in its proper place in terms of science, that we
come to the problem of God.
Conclusion: The Rise of Freedom
Let us turn to cast an eye over the road that we have
followed.
At the beginning, we seemed to see around us nothing but a
disconnected and disordered humanity: the crowd, the mass, in
which, it may be, we saw only brutality and ugliness. I have
tried, fortified by the most generally accepted and solid
conclusions of science, to take the reader above this scene of
turmoil; and, as we have risen higher, so has the prospect
acquired a more ordered shape. Like the petals of a gigantic
lotus at the end of the day, we have seen human petals of
planetary dimensions slowly closing in upon themselves. And, at
the heart of this huge calyx, beneath the pressure of its in-
folding, a center of power has been revealed, where spiritual
energy, gradually released by a vast totalitarian mechanism, then
concentrated by heredity within a sort of super-brain, has,
little by little, been transformed into a common vision growing
ever more intense. In this spectacle of tranquillity and
intensity, where the anomalies of detail, so disconcerting on our
individual scale, vanish to give place to a vast, serene, and
irresistible movement from the heart, everything is contained and
everything harmonized in accord with the rest of the universe.
Life and consciousness are no longer chance anomalies in Nature;
rather, we find in biology a complement to the physics of matter.
On the one hand, I repeat, the stuff of the world dispersing
through the radiation of its elemental energy; and, on the other
hand, the same stuff re-converging through the radiation of
thought. The fantastic at either end: but, surely, the one is
necessary to balance the other? Thus, harmony is achieved in the
ultimate perspective and, furthermore, a program for the future:
for, if this view is accepted, we see a splendid goal before us,
and a clear line of progress. Coherence and fecundity, the two
criteria of truth.
Is this all illusion, or is it reality?
It is for the reader to decide. But, to those who hesitate,
or who refuse to commit themselves, I would say: 'Have you
anything else, anything better to suggest, that will account
scientifically for the phenomenon of man considered as a whole,
in the light of his past development and present progress?'
You may reply to me that this is all very well, but is there
not something lacking, an essential element, in this system which
I claim to be so coherent? Within that grandiose machine-in-
motion which I visualize, what becomes of that pearl beyond
price, our personal being? What remains of our freedom of choice
and action?
But, do you not see that, from the standpoint I have
adopted, it appears everywhere -- and is everywhere heightened?
I know very well that, by a kind of innate obsession, we
cannot rid ourselves of the idea that we become most masters of
ourselves by being as isolated as possible. But, is not this the
reverse of the truth? We must not forget that, in each of us, by
our very nature, everything is in an elemental state, including
our freedom of action. We can only achieve a wider degree of
freedom by joining and associating with others in an appropriate
way. This is, to be sure, a dangerous operation since, whether
it be a case of disorderly intermingling, or of some simple form
of coordination, like the meshing of gear wheels, our activities
tend to cancel one another out, or to become mechanical. We find
this only too often in practice. Yet, it is also salutary, since
the approach of spirit to spirit in a common vision, or shared
passion, undoubtedly enriches all: in the case of a team, for
example, or of two lovers. Achieved with sympathy, union does
not restrict, but exalts the possibilities of our being. We see
this everywhere and every day, on a limited scale. Why should it
not be worth correspondingly more on a vast and all embracing
scale, if the law applies to the very structure of things? It is
simply a question of tension within the field that polarizes and
attracts. In the case of a blind aggregation, of some form of
purely mechanical arrangement, the effect of large numbers is to
materialize our activities. That is true. But, where it is a
matter of unanimity realized from within, the effect is to
personalize them and, I will add, to make them unerring. A
single freedom, taken in isolation, is weak and uncertain and may
easily lose itself in mere groping. But, a totality of freedom,
freely operating, will always end by finding its road. And this,
incidentally, is why, throughout this paper, without seeking to
minimize the uncertainties inherent in Man's freedom of choice in
relation to the world, I have been able implicitly to maintain
that we are moving, both freely and ineluctably, in the direction
of concentration by way of planetization. One might put it that
determinism appears at either end of the process of cosmic
evolution, but in antithetically opposed forms: at the lower
end, it is forced along the line of the most probable for lack of
freedom; at the upper end, it is an ascent into the improbable
through the triumph of freedom.
We may be reassured. The vast industrial and social system
by which we are enveloped does not threaten to crush us, neither
does it seek to rob us of our soul. The energy emanating from it
is free, not only in the sense that it represents forces that can
be used; it is moreover free because, in the whole, no less than
in the least of its elements, it arises in a state that is ever
more spiritualized. A thinker such as Cournot [12] might still
be able to suppose that the socialized group degrades itself
biologically in terms of the individuals which comprise it. Only
by reaching to the heart of the Noosphere (we see it more clearly
today) can we hope, and indeed be sure of finding, all of us
together and each of us separately, the fullness of our humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Note in the Revue des Questions Scientifique [see below]
where this essay originally appeared: 'To avoid
misunderstanding, it may be well to point out that the general
synthesis outlined in these pages makes no claim to replace or to
exclude the theological account of human destiny. The
description of the Noosphere and its attendant biology, as here
propounded, is no more opposed to the Divine Transcendence, to
Grace, to the Incarnation, or to the Ultimate Parousia, than is
the science of paleontology to the Creation, or of embryology to
the First Cause. The reverse is true. To those prepared to
follow the author in his thinking, it will be apparent that
biology merges into theology, and that the Word made Flesh is to
be regarded not as a postulate of science -- which would be, in
the nature of things, absurd -- but as something, a mysterious
Alpha and Omega, taking its place within the whole plan of the
universe, both human and divine.' Pierre Charles, S.J.
[2] This term, invented by Suess, is sometimes interpreted
(Wladimir Vernadsky) in the sense of the 'terrestrial zone
containing life.' I use it here to mean the actual layer of
vitalized substance enveloping the earth.
[3] From noos, mind: the terrestrial sphere of thinking
substance.
[4] The word 'orthogenesis' is here used in its widest sense:
'A definite orientation offsetting the effect of chance in the
play of heredity.'
[5] Dr. A. Blanc has recently given the name of 'lysis' to this
phenomenon of the releasing of morphological forces.
[6] Pensees d'un biologiste, pp. 32-35
[7] A small cynocephalus (baboon), born in captivity, will
commit all kinds of blunders when set free (heredity of
education). But, in similar conditions, a young otter, being put
in the water, will at once know how to behave (chromosomic
heredity). Cf. Eugene N. Marais, The Soul of the White Ant.
[8] e.g., Edouard Le Roy, Les Origines humaines et le Probleme
de l'Intelligence.
[9] e.g., Jacques Lafitte, Reflexions sur la Science de la
Machine. La Nouvelle Journee, No. 21, 1932.
[10] Lecture delivered in New York and published in the
Scientific Monthly, 1940.
[11] George Gaylord Simpson, The Role of the Individual in
Evolution, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol.
31, no. 1, 1941.
[12] Cournot, A.-A. Considerations sur la Marche des idees et
des Evenements dan les Temps modernes. (Reedition Mentre. Vol.
II, p. 178).
Revue des Questions Scientifique, (Louvain), January, 1947.
pp. 7-35.
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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin