Today’s Post
Last week we took a look at Teilhard’s somewhat counter-intuitive perception of what’s going on in the noosphere. This week we will summarize his observations into a list of its characteristics that we can then use to quantify how closely actual contemporary data resonate with his insights.
Outlining the Noospheric Structure
From Teilhard’s insights into the mileu of human activity, the ‘noosphere’, we can begin to identify its structural components so that we can better navigate its complex geography.
It is very evident from last week’s post that Teilhard believed that humans are very well equipped to ‘navigate’ this uncharted Northern hemisphere into which we are beginning to inhabit. This week we will outline his characteristics of this structure so that we can proceed to see how his concepts, and his forecast for the future, lines up with what we know today.
The Structure
Teilhard recognizes that, as a product of evolution, humans are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as our evolutionary precedents. While every evolutionary step from the burst of energy at the big bang to the present is accompanied by risks to its continuation, Teilhard recognizes the ‘structural’ evolutionary agency of ‘increasing complexity’ which moves it forward.
He also recognizes that this rise of complexity is decidedly non-linear: each major step requires crossing some boundary by which the new entity differs considerably from its precedent, such as the emergence of matter from raw energy, the appearance of complex atoms from simple ones by the agency of gravity, the formation of complex molecules, the appearance of the cell, the rise of consciousness from neural networks and eventually, the appearance of ‘reflective consciousness’: consciousness aware of itself.
In traversing each of these boundaries, or as he calls them, ‘changes of state’, we can see that the ‘laws’ of the sphere which preceded the new entity are superseded by a new set of ‘laws’ by which the new sphere is governed. The structure of the ‘biosphere’, for example, is quite different from that of the ‘lithosphere’, and the emerging understanding of living things requires a new grasp of how living things differ from ‘non-living’ (or as Teilhard would say, ‘pre-living’) things.
With the rise of complexity, not surprisingly, these laws themselves become more complex. With the human, in addition to all the novelty of reflective consciousness, we have the added complexity of entities whose evolution is dependent on their understanding of the new set of laws. Humans are effectively building a bridge on which they are trying to cross.
In effect, understanding the structure of the noosphere is essential to building it.
Teilhard’s Characteristics of Noospheric Structure
- The Product of Evolution Teilhard’s first characteristic of the noosphere is that it fits into the sweep of evolutionary development. While humans are definitely unique products of evolution, they are nonetheless products. The insight here is that while this may be so, humans can expect the same phenomenon of ‘change of state’ to effect new capabilities in the human navigation of this new sphere.
- Persistence of Evolutionary laws His second characteristic is that the ‘laws’ of the previous spheres, while still at work in the human person (such as the instincts provided by our pre-human reptilian and limbic brain structures), need to be modulated by the new brain capacity provided by the human neo-cortex. What worked in early human social structures must be slowly replaced by activities more appropriate to the noosphere. As we become more aware of the structure of the noosphere, our activities must evolve in the direction of cohesion with them.
- Changes of State His third characteristic applies this succession of ‘changes of state’ to the human when he recognizes that ‘noospheric compression’ can also effect ‘human complexification’. The proximity of humans caused by their movement into the ‘Northern hemisphere’, while (like all such evolutionary steps) this may come with some risk (and we have seen the risk in our past), it also comes with progress. As we saw last week, the human species is
“vitally forced to find continually new ways of arranging its elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space.”
- Inner Pull vs External Push In this enterprise, Teilhard sees a fourth characteristic: such compression can only succeed if the elements can find a new way of relating to each other. This new way of relating requires persons to connect in such a way as to expand their person-ness, to become more of what they are capable of becoming. This transition from an external force which pushes us ever closer, to an internal force which pulls us together by freeing us from our limited possession of our selves, allows compression to effect complexification. Thus he understands Love as the latest manifestation of the basic force of evolution: the only one capable of uniting us by what is most unique in us, but yet one rising from the depths of time, continuously uniting the products of evolution in such a way that they become ever more complex.
- Human Invention This characteristic isn’t from Teilhard, but from John McHale, The Future of the Future . but fits in well with those of Teilhard.
“At this point, then, where man’s affairs reach the scale of potential disruption of the global ecosystem, he invents precisely those conceptual and physical technologies that may enable him to deal with the magnitude of a complex planetary society.”
As he points out, while forecasting the future may difficult, we seem to always be able to invent what is needed to continue it.
- The Risk of Human Evolution In the sixth characteristic, Teilhard acknowledges the risk in such an undertaking. If we are walking on the bridge while we are building it, and our grasp of our internal self is critical to the enterprise, what happens if we cannot commit to its continuation? The pessimism that he saw still persists today. Without faith in the future, there is no guarantee that human evolution will continue. In his words:
“At this decisive moment when for the first time he (man, that is, man as such) is becoming scientifically aware of the general pattern of his future on earth, what he needs before anything else, perhaps, is to be quite certain, on cogent experimental grounds, that the sort of temporo-spatial dome into which his destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”
We will begin looking into such ‘cogent experimental grounds’ in the next post.
Taking the Measure of Human Evolution
As I outlined two posts ago, what’s the case for optimism? It’s been some eighty years since Teilhard made his case for being optimistic about human future. Since then human society has become ever more proficient at gathering data; we are drowning in it today. With all the facts at our hand, we should be able to get some objective sense on whether Teilhard’s projections are proving true.
The Next Post
This week we have boiled down Teilhard’s observations and projections into six characteristics.
Next week we will begin a survey of the noosphere today to see how objective data can be brought to bear on his insights.