The great French Jesuit geologist and palaeontologist, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin (1881-1955), famously distinguished between the Biosphere - the whole world of living beings on this planet - and the Noösphere, what he believed to be the organic unity formed by all the minds of every human being, a collective unconscious mind (an idea similar to that proposed by Carl Jung), which Teilhard regarded as the penultimate stage of evolution.
The ultimate stage would, he believed, be reached when this collective mind became fully conscious, and entered into full communion, and union, with God. He called this stage the 'Omega Point'.
Teilhard's Jesuit superiors were somewhat dubious about his Catholic orthodoxy, and they were probably right. This reader regards his theories as logically incoherent and uncomfortably close to the collectivist thinking of social philosophers as various as Marx, Tönnies, Durkheim and Croce.
That, however, is a relatively trivial concern. Of much greater importance is the fact that the Noösphere, insofar as it can be said to exist, is in conflict with the Biosphere. It may not be an unconscious 'Mind' as such, but our collective acts and omissions are damaging life on this planet, and will cause further damage, unless drastic change occurs. This is a conflict the Biosphere must win, or every species loses.
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