The noetic , of the old Greek us ( νοῦς , intellect), is a branch of the Philosophie which treats questions about the Intellect and the Pensée. Among his main aims one can mention the study of the nature and operation of human intellect and the bonds between this intellect and divine intellect. This is why the noétique one had often very close links with the Métaphysique. In the Western tradition and Arab philosophy the noétique one was very influenced by the theories of philosophers like Anaxagore, Aristote or Plato.

History of the noétique one

The Us of Anaxagore

Anaxagore supported that the us (spirit, intellect) was the cause of the universe.

Intellect according to Aristote

In the Western tradition and Arab philosophy, a good part of noetic developed thanks to the study of certain works of Aristote like:

• the Métaphysique

• This work presents the Engine First which is act: he thinks itself.

• Of the Heart

• This work presents the process of the intellection of the understandable . The intellect agent is the active ingredient of our intellect which makes so that our possible intellect seizes or becomes the understandable ones.

• the Organon

Developments of the aristotelicians

• Théophraste : Metaphysics

• Alexandre d' Aphrodise: Metaphysics , Of Animated , intellectu

• Alexandre seems to pose, inter alia, the identity between intellect agent and the first cause (or god).

Developments of the neoplatonicians

The Néoplatonisme brings to noetic of the solutions resulting from the reflections on one and the Multiple mainly.

• Plotin : Ennéades

• Plotin develops a theory of the process of emanation from one and Intellect (Us).

Developments of the Arab philosophers

The Arab philosophers developed original concepts and noetic theories during several centuries. They have summer generally influenced by the Néoplatonisme.

• Al-Kindi: Of intellectu

• Al Farabi: De Intellectu And Intellecto

• One of the principal Al Farabi contributions is its description of the acquired intellect .

• Avicenne : Of Animated

• Avicenne presents, inter alia, holy intellect .

• Averroès : Grand comment with Animated of Aristote

• Averroès supports in particular the thesis of the unit of possible intellect.

Developments of the Latin medieval philosophers

The Latin medieval philosophers take again the texts aristotelicians and the original developments of the Arab philosophers in order to contribute a new share to the noétique one.

• Albert Large the: Of intellectu and intelligibili , Of Animated

• Albert was a large reader of philosophers like Averroès. To be included/understood, its noetic work complexes requires, inter alia, the study of the developments neoplatonicians and Arab philosophy.

• Thomas d' Aquin: Of unitate intellectu countered averroistas

• Thomas d' Aquin, which was a pupil of Albert the Large one, is opposed to the thesis according to which possible intellect would be single for all the men.

Principal concepts of the noétique one

• Intellect agent

• In Of the Heart , Aristote more precisely has “the intellect which produces all things” ( Ho us you panta poiein ).

• possible Intellect

• Understandable

• Driving First

Principal questions treated by the noétique one

• the nature of intellect agent and possible intellect

• bonds between intellect and divine intellect

• the unit or the plurality of human intellect

• the problem of acquired intellect ( intellectus adeptus )

The noetic revolution

From a less philosophical but more sociological point of view, one calls “noetic revolution” the passage of the consumer society at the company of knowledge, of the industrial economy to the immaterial economy. The noétique one, in very in short, is the study of knowledge. Not only of the value of knowledge like does it epistemology, not only mechanisms mental and neurobiologic as do it cognitive sciences, but, more generally, like the study, under all their aspects, from the production (creativity), from the formulation (semiology and metalanguages), from the structuring (ideology and paradigm, system theory), from the validation (criteria of relevance, epistemology) and from the proliferation (process of appropriation and standardization) of the ideas, to the full extent from this term, i.e. abstract “forms” (the word “idea” comes from the Greek eïdos who means “form”).

She studies in particular the dynamics and the life cycles of the ideas and the theories: conditions of emergence (of recent studies related, for example, to the genesis of the theories of relativity), deployment, apogee, degeneration and deliquescence. One can quote, for example, the beautiful synthesis of Frederic Lenoir appeared recently under the title the Metamorphoses of God - new Western spirituality (Plon - 2003) where are studied the various (R) evolutions of the traditions and currents religious lasting this last century.

It is seen the field is vast. Almost all is there still to clear. Methodologies often remain to be invented. The concepts themselves, if one wants to avoid jargonneux barbarisms and neologisms, must often be reformulated carefully. Since the languages, logics, sciences, the ideologies, the religions, the traditions make all integral parts of the human Knowledge and thus, like such, subjected to life cycles and of death, Noétique, to avoid the trap tautological or reductionistic, must include them all but by exceeding them: news (méta) methodologies, news (méta) logical and new (méta) languages must thus be implemented. It is understood that it would be absurd to study the scientific knowledge while applying to him, such as it is, the Cartesian method which is the ridge purlin. To look through the old window positivist or scientistic would come down making it admire itself in an opaque mirror.

Historically, one can say that the recent development of Noétique is child of the data-processing revolution which, while causing the treatment, the exchange and the storage of immense quantities of information (thus of elements of knowledge), made essential a basic reflection on nature, the structure and the procedures of knowledge in general.

But Noétique is more than one field of studies and research. It is also in the middle of the capsizings of our time…

A noetic revolution?

This same data-processing revolution, with, for current paragon, phenomenon Internet, also engaged a basic, paradigmatic revolution (within the meaning of Kuhn): we pass from the “modern” age at the post-modern age, of the company of the objects and consumption at the company of knowledge and information, of an economy industrial to an immaterial economy, of a capacity of the money to a capacity of the talent, of a vision mechanist and reducing of the world to an organic and holistic vision of the world. It is that which I call the “noetic revolution”. She had been predicted by Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, etc and she was already described by Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine, Trinh Xuan Thuan, Ervin Laszlo, Hubert Reeves, Jacques Lesourne, Henri Atlan, and well of others…

What did it thus occur? Nothing more than the realization of the prediction of Pierre Teilhard of Chardin as for emergence, at the beginning of the sociosphère human (preceded by the lithosphere and the biosphere), of a new “layer” on terrestrial onion: a made abstract layer of knowledge autonomous and connected between them by infinite networks. This layer, Teilhard called it the “noosphère”: the cosmic evolution passed successively from Energy to the Matter, the Matter to the Life, and passes, now, of the Life to the Thought (thus with knowledge). It is the data-processing revolution which allowed the contemporary acceleration of this noospheric emergence.

The man, after being itself released of the dangers of wild Nature, releases himself, today, little by little, of the influence of the Machine (emblem and model mechanist of Modernity) and of the Object (emblem of the mercantile company of consumption) to enter the era of knowledge and the creative thought. This release is not neutral as for the behaviors…

A noetic culture?

This noetic revolution already induced behavioral and social changes fundamental. It is what the American sociologists Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson called: the Emergence of creative cultural the (ED. Yves Michel - 2001). In two words, out of traditional bipolarity between “modernistic” (holding of the technological advancement, unrestrained consumption and the euphoria hedonist) and “traditionalists” (holding of the “good old day” and all nostalgias morals, ideological and religious), the carried out surveys show the rise of a third force (which represents between 25 and 30% of the adult populations in the USA and in Europe). This third force, the creative cultural ones, deploys a design of the world and life which, probably, will become soon dominant. One finds there the values principal following: social autonomy, active respect of nature, free spirituality, achievement of oneself, political distrust (their currency would be: neither on the left, nor on the right, but ahead!), multi-activities and multi-memberships, nomadisms (cf Jacques Attali), selective solidarity, desurbanisation, alternative medicines and dietetic studied, rehabilitation of the body, reactivation of the right brain in addition to the left brain, etc

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