Saturday, November 21, 2009

(2) Consciousness & Complexity

Teilhard stresses a sense of building-up, of an accumulation
of a cosmic reflective nature. He puts it thus: "Under the free
and ingenious effort of successful intelligences, *something*...
irreversibly accumlates...and is transmitted, at least collectively
by means of education, down the course of ages."

On Earth the person individually, and humanity collectively,
represent cosmic consciousness at its present stage of
development. Teilhard declares" man as a definite turning
point, an upgrading of the cosmic process towards consciousness.
But he does *not* consider man separate from Nature! "Man
emerged from a general groping of the world. He was born
a direct lineal descendent from a total effort of life, so that the
species has an axial value and a pre-eminent dignity."

Teilhard believes that man may be pivotal in this cosmogenic
outreach towards greater consciousness. Humankind
collectively, says Teilhard, is in a "state of continuous additive
growth, in numbers and inter-connections." It is becoming
more "tightly concentrated upon itself."

Teilhard calls for a push toward a new dimension of cosmic
reality. He calls for the human collectivity to erect a "sphere of
mutually reinforced consciousness, the seat, support and
instrument of super-vision and super-ideas. Mankind has to
build the noosphere!

Optimistic, Teilhard believes that the human collectivity has
already made some progress towards achieving the construction
of the noosphere. Teilhard puts it: "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.
But today...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, Research...is in
process of becoming a major, indeed the principal, function of
humanity." Teilhard definitely believes that humanity is
"cerebralizing" itself, and slowly but surely building the noosphere..."