Swallowing the Noosphere

It's Freya's day-after-2023-Thanksgiving with cold Northerlies providing a preview of coming Winter attractions . . .. . . and the mailbox brought yet more profound matters for digestion . . .

Today is the 391st anniversary of Benedict Spinoza's birth. The wide-ranging philosopher was born on this date in 1632 Amsterdam. He defined Creation, Creator and the laws of nature as one and the same. He was, as has been many if not most visionaries, excommunicated and marginalized even unto today.

Speaking of visionaries: Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published on this date in 1859. Many of my niebors here in Okieland still think “evolution” is an evil word without having tried to understand its meaning.

Without precedent in the history of life, we suffer from a collective psychic disorientation. More than at any other moment of history, Teilhard de Chardin argued, we are experiencing a fundamental anguish of being. Something threatening is opening up in front of us, and something seems more than ever lacking. Teilhard in his lifetime, like Spinoza, was wholly misunderstood and marginalized. Looking for a challenging read that explores our present circumstance? Take on de Chardin’s “Phenomenology of the Noosphere” in: Continental Philosophy of Technoscience. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology (2022). It's a long but IMO worthy read, quite ahead of present day Quantum theory's revelations of interconnectedness and the necessary interdisciplinary union of physics, evolution and philosophy.