en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere
1 correction found
The term noosphere was first used in the publications of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1922 in his Cosmogenesis.
This appears to misstate both the timing and the publication history of the term. Recent scholarship says Teilhard’s earliest known use was in an unpublished essay, while Édouard Le Roy was the first to publish the word in print.
Full reasoning
A recent peer-reviewed overview in Systems Research and Behavioral Science states that Teilhard first wrote the word in an unpublished essay and that Édouard Le Roy was the first to publish it in print. That directly contradicts the claim that the term was first used in Teilhard’s publications in 1922.
An American Teilhard Association document likewise says Teilhard first used the word in his essay “Hominization,” finished in Paris on May 6, 1925, and describes that essay as later reprinted, again indicating an unpublished or later-published manuscript, not a 1922 publication called Cosmogenesis.
There is some variation in secondary literature about whether the essay should be dated 1923 or 1925, but the key point is consistent across the sources: the earliest known Teilhard use was not a 1922 published use, and the first published use is attributed to Le Roy, not Teilhard.
2 sources
- What is the noosphere? Planetary superorganism, major evolutionary transition and emergence
"Teilhard first wrote the word ‘noosphere’ in an unpublished essay dated 6 May 1925 ..., while Le Roy (1928) was the first to publish the word in press".
- On the Trail of a French Philosopher of Genius
"Teilhard first used the word in his essay ‘Hominization,’ finished in Paris on May 6, 1925, reprinted in La Vision du Passé (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957)."