Noosphere

//ˈnoʊ.əsfɪɚ// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The sphere of human reason, thought, and consciousness, seen as a theoretical evolutionary stage.

    "I used to have a pretty clear idea of God. Now we have these new theologians who say God’s inside here not up there or he’s an impersonal noosphere and the anthropomorphic image is out. Three unpersons in one anthropomorphic noosphere."

Example

More examples

"Could artificial minds be added to the total sum of human ones that is the noosphere?"

Etymology

Borrowed from French noosphère, from Ancient Greek νόος (nóos, “mind, spirit”) + Ancient Greek σφαῖρα (sphaîra, “ball, globe”), developed and perhaps coined by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Vernadsky, in analogy to atmosphere, biosphere etc. By surface analysis, nous (“mind”) + -sphere.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.