Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere

For centuries, people  — both misanthropes and humanists alike  —  have compared Earth’s life to a ‘sludge’ clinging to our planet’s crust. Stephen Hawking memorably called the human race ‘chemical scum’ clinging cravenly to a spinning rock. Is biology merely a mold or planetary fungal infection? Answering this question depends on the evaluation of the stature of sludge. After all, some slime has potentials. The Earth’s organic coating, after all, has  — for aeons now  — drastically transformed its planetary environment, bringing forth the unprecedented from the precedented. So far, however, this process would be best called planetary stupidity, rather than planetary sapience. However, how could it have been otherwise? No one is born wise: this is a status that can only ever be earned, and this takes time and tribulation. So, too, with any baby intelligence, no matter the scale. Folly is part of growing up. This talk, thus, asks the question: can our planet’s infant noosphere, spawned from upstart chemical slurry, ever leave its infancy?

Thomas Moynihan is a UK-based author. Holding a PhD from Oriel College, Oxford University, he is currently a Research Affiliate at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk as well as a Affiliate Researcher for the Berggruen Institute’s Antikythera thinktank. Thomas Moynihan writes about the history of ideas, which he takes to be the study of the ways worldviews transform  —  in often radical ways  —  as we learn more about ourselves and our position within the universe. Moynihan is the author of X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction, published with MIT Press and Urbanomic in 2020, as well as Spinal Catastrophism, published also with MIT Press and Urbanomic, in 2019. His writing has appeared in publications including the BBC, The New Scientist, The Guardian, Aeon, Big Think, Noema Magazine, Independent, Vice, amongst many others. He has keynoted at institutions ranging from MIT’s Media Lab to Luxembourg’s Museum of Modern Art, and has been interviewed on platforms ranging from BBC Radio 4 to The Atlantic’s Re:Think podcast.