Omega Point
Teilhard's concept: a mystical horizon toward which evolution would converge. The manifesto explicitly sets it aside — the noosphere does not converge toward a distant point, it folds back upon itself.
The Omega Point is, in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s thought, the ultimate horizon toward which cosmic evolution would converge — a point where complexification would reach its term, where consciousness would fold back upon itself in a form of final unity (which Teilhard, a Jesuit, identified with the cosmic Christ).
The manifesto’s gesture
The manifesto explicitly sets aside this concept while saluting Teilhard’s profound intuition concerning the noosphere. The text is very precise on this point:
The noosphere does not converge toward any distant point; it folds back upon itself, here and now.
This is a decisive shift. Teilhard saw evolution as an ascent toward a mystical horizon. The manifesto sees the cognitive noosphere as an immanent event — one that occurs now, without teleology, without providential design, through the crystallization of local resonances accumulated over two centuries (the steam-engine lineage).
Why it matters
Without this clarification, one might think the manifesto is selling a new eschatology. It takes care to cut short any such reading. The project is not to ascend toward an Omega Point, but to maintain the coupling between the three poles — human, cognitive noosphere, biosphere — in a present that is going nowhere in particular but that can, if we go about it well, endure.