1st Edition

The Mind of Society

By Yvon Provencal Copyright 1998

    First Published in 1999. This book brings together the ideas of theoretician Marvin Minsky and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Provencal's theory inverts Minsky's "society of the mind" into the "mind of society," giving a new and firm basis to the Teilhardian idea of Noosphere and allowing for unsuspected transdisciplinary regularities between several scientific domains including phys­ics, biology and anthropology. Provencal aims to show that a very special type of global, planetary consciousness is emerging and to explain better the way in which human ideas constitute a global, auto-organizing system.

    Chapter 1 Ideometry; Chapter 2 The Concept of Complete Structure; Chapter 3 The Concept of Alterity; Chapter 4 The Ideometric Sequence of Physics-Biology-Anthropology; Chapter 5 The Mind of Society: From Marvin Minsky to Teilhard de Chardin; Chapter 6 The Physiology of Society; Chapter 7 The Consciousness of Society; Chapter 8 The Development of Science as the Growing Self-Consciousness of Society; Conclusion: the Autoorganization of Ideas: Toward an Impending Emergence;

    Biography

    Yvon Provencal is professor of philosophy at College de Granby, Quebec, Canada, where he has taught for more than five years. Dr. Provencal also holds a master of science degree in physics and has taught physics at College Montmorency, Laval, Quebec; Edouard-Montpetit, Longueuil, Quebec; College de Victoriaville and College de Granby.