The complex set of human‐driven global, social, technological, and environmental changes intensifying dramatically since 1950 has been identified as the “Great Acceleration.” This period of time represents a radical shift in our collective relationship to each other as well as to the Earth system as a whole. In this article I consider two major paradigms now taking shape to offer different perspectives on the Great Acceleration: The Anthropocene and the Noosphere. I explore the scientific‐intellectual traditions from which each paradigm derives and contrast their nearly opposite normative evaluations of global transformation. The Anthropocene has emerged as the paradigm of rupture, materiality, and warning; the Noosphere as the paradigm of development, mind/culture, and hope. I also highlight preliminary attempts at bringing the two divergent paradigms closer together into a more unified and balanced vision of planetary change.
The theory of the superorganism—that there exist composite forms of life organized at scales above the multicellular organism—has been part of scientific discourse and speculation since the late 1800s. Over the last century theories of the superorganism have grown in scope from designating the local insect colony as emergently alive to positing a global entity enveloping the entire planetary surface. The planetary version of superorganism theory has developed in two different forms, the ecological form of Gaia theory and the sociological form of globalized humankind, with the possible implication that the surface of our single planet is now occupied by two distinct planetary superorganisms. In this article, I summarize the parallel histories of this speculative biological-planetary concept, propose a theory about the relationship of the two coexisting planetary superorganisms, and reflect on how this theory recasts the global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. I conclude with a note about simplistic or totalizing superorganism assertions.
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