Conference Opening 2004 Noosphere Conference

It is both an honor and a great delight to welcome you all to the magical environs of the Les Marronniers conference centre and to the 2004 Institute of Ecotechnics meeting on the Noosphere: Art, Science and Ventures.

We have been building towards this conference for a long time. Perhaps it's appropriate a new millennium has just started, for the effort to realize a noosphere may be a principal occupation and challenge for humanity during the next 1000 years! And some might say that's an optimistic viewpoint….is such a state of affairs - a noosphere, a sustainable future - achievable at all?

Therefore it's most appropriate that we have at our meeting Russians from the highest levels of their scientific tradition, for the legacy of Vernadsky's work and the concept of noosphere is so important there. I recall my introduction to the term when Josef Gitelson, one of the leaders of Russia's closed ecological system program came to Biosphere 2 and declared the project in which eight humans attempted to act as intelligent stewards of an evolving complex system of which they themselves were only a small part - should have been called not Biosphere 2 but rather "Noosphere 1".

And how fitting for us to be meeting here in France, for the term, noosphere, was coined in Paris in the early 1920s where three remarkable men were working: Vladimir Vernadsky, the Russian polymath who pioneered biogeochemistry and laid the foundations for the modern understanding of the biosphere, the French scientist and philosopher, Eduard Le Roi and Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist and mystic. It's not terribly important for our purposes which of them originally coined the phrase, whether it arose from a synergy of their thinking, or was inspired by Vernadsky's lectures on the biosphere at the Sorbonne. What is of greater importance is the meaning and interpretation we give the concept.

Briefly, the etymology of the word. Noos comes from the Greek word meaning the mind, and the related word, Nooin, that could be translated as the act of intentional perception. In scientific usage, sphere is used to denote a pervasive global presence or process, as in hydrosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, biosphere.

Teilhard de Chardin visualized the noosphere as a sort of spiritual dimension - a sphere of mental activity encapsulating the planet. Vernadsky, however, used the term in a grounded and scientific sense. Seeing that humanity had become a "geological force" in the modern biosphere, profoundly impacting the cycling of matter, Vernadsky understood that our creativity could be a power for good or serve destructive, life-denying ends. Vernadsky saw humanity as inseparable from the biosphere and perhaps its most refined product. One of his writings, Science as a Planetary Phenomenon, celebrates the unprecedented acceleration and spread of a scientific understanding of nature and humanity's place in it.

For Vernadsky, the noosphere, meaning the harmonious and scientifically-based participation of humanity in the evolution of the biosphere, represents the coming "geological era". While some have argued as to whether the term implies human control and dominance of biospheric processes, it is difficult to imagine that Vernadsky with his comprehensive understanding of the vast scale and magnitude of natural biospheric cycles could assign humanity such a pre-eminent role. Rather, he thought it imperative that humanity learn to better integrate our evolving technologic, economic and cultural needs within the biosphere which sustains all life. In more recent Russian thinking, this is often shortened to the noosphere resulting from the harmonization of the technosphere with the biosphere. Becoming more conscious of our place and role in the biosphere, humanity will refashion itself to become conscious and cooperative agents of evolution.

We hear echoes of the noosphere in the growing sense that we are facing an unprecedented ecological crisis; and in the calls for transforming human activities and population to sustainable levels.. Everyone can read the handwriting on the wall. As it was succinctly formulated: "Things that can't go on forever, don't."

We added three subthemes to our noosphere conference: art, science and ventures. Why art? Well, Vernadsky did not limit the noosphere to humanity's scientific investigations alone, and specifically mentions artistic and cultural knowledge as part of the noospheric developmental process. The term "Art" comes from root words meaning to join or fit together. The human propensity to make things, creativeness; skill; making or doing of things that have form and beauty. At least one of our speakers intends to address the notions of beauty and aesthetics from a noospheric perspective, and, as we always do, we have included artists in our dialogue for art is the growing tip of human sensibility and consciousness. The creation of a noosphere will have need of artistry, of a developed sense of beauty and form, if things are to be joined and fit together in a deeply organically satisfying way.

Science, a term now ubiquitously used and abused, stems from the root Latin word Sciere, meaning to know. Science essentially means a state or fact of knowing as opposed to intuition or belief; systematized knowledge derived from observation, study and experimentation. Those who would turn science into our modern religion, demanding belief and faith, subvert its very essence. Biospherics - the emerging science of the biosphere, demands use and integration of all the human sciences, for as ecology teaches us, everything is connected to everything else. Is there a possible science of the noosphere - noospherics? Vernadsky wrote that scientists are responsible for the uses that humanity makes of their findings, and the technologies they give rise to. Is the sphere of evaluation the noosphere, where the impact and integration of human technologies with the biosphere can be fully elucidated?

And finally, the last of our triad, Ventures. The word originally meant "a happening"; its current meaning is a risky or dangerous undertaking especially a business enterprise in which there is as great a danger of loss as a chance for profit. As modern business gurus make clear, the greater the risk, the greater the potential profit. In humanity's ventures into noosphere creation, there is certainly risk, appalling risks, for the future and health of both ourselves and our biosphere are on the line. But there is no turning back. Perhaps as our opening speaker will explain, we passed the point of no-return when the last competing hominid species was eliminated, and our tool-making ancestors spread around the globe, intent on "disturbing the universe" and seeing what a cerebrally-highly endowed critter could do. For, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "and so each venture is a new beginning, a raid upon the inarticulate" (and aware of entropy and necessity of progressive approximations in a complex and ever-changing world) he notes that each venturous raid upon the inarticulate is made "with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision"

The metaphor of the blind men and the elephant has spread around the world. It well illustrates the state of confusion that results when specialists examine parts of a large and complex system, without realizing they are simply encountering differing parts of a unified whole. Reality, like an elephant, is not divided into categories or academic departments, nor is it partitioned between the artists and the scientists, the literate and the cultures who still value direct experience. Add to our difficulty if the elephant is the noosphere, that we are dealing with an emergent phenomenon, not yet fully in existence; and something which will never be static and complete, for it will form part of a constantly evolving complex system.

I see our meeting then as an exploration - our speakers as noospheric explorers, bringing back reports of their ad-VENTURES and experiences in their chosen fields of investigation, information that must be integrated by us all into aspects of the multi-faceted intelligence that a noosphere demands.

What realms of intelligent, mindful participation are possible that we can collectively bring into being? Our tools: all the arts of joining things beautifully together while we systematically observe, study and experiment on the cutting-edge of the various fields of knowledge where the greatest risks and profits lie, ever aware of the abyss which threatens our progress and the garden of earthly delights that is the reward of true intelligence.