Collective wisdom, also called group wisdom and co-intelligence, is shared knowledge arrived at by individuals and groups. Collective intelligence, which is sometimes used synonymously with collective wisdom, is more of a shared decision process than collective wisdom. Unlike collective wisdom, collective intelligence is not uniquely human, and has been associated with animal and plant life. Collective intelligence is basically consensus-driven decision making, whereas collective wisdom is not necessarily focused on the decision process. Collective wisdom is a more amorphous phenomenon which can be characterized by collective learning over time.
History
Collective wisdom, which may be said to have a more distinctly human quality than collective intelligence, is contained in such early works as The Torah, The Bible, The Koran, the works of Plato, Confucius and Buddha, Bhagavad Gita, and the many myths and legends from all cultures. Drawing from the idea of universal truth, the point of collective wisdom is to make life easier/more enjoyable through understanding human behavior, whereas the point of collective intelligence is to make life easier/more enjoyable through the application of acquired knowledge. While collective intelligence may be said to have more mathematical and scientific bases, collective wisdom also accounts for the spiritual realm of human behaviors and consciousness. Thomas Jefferson referred to the concept of collective wisdom when he made his statement, "A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry". And in effect, the ideal of a democracy is that government functions best when everyone participates. British philosopherThomas Hobbes uses his Leviathan to illustrate how mankind's collective consciousness grows to create collective wisdom. Émile Durkheim argues in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life that society by definition constitutes a higher intelligence because it transcends the individual over space and time, thereby achieving collective wisdom. 19th century Prussian physicist Gustav Fechner argued for a collective consciousness of mankind, and cited Durkheim as the most credible scholar in the field of "collective consciousness". Fechner also referred to the work of Jesuit PriestPierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose concept of the noosphere was a precursor to the term collective intelligence. H.G. Wells's concept of "world brain", as described in his book of essays with the same title, has more recently been examined in depth by Pierre Lévy in his book, . Howard Bloom's treatise "" examines similarities in organizational patterns in nature, human brain function, society, and the cosmos. He also posits the theory that group selection directs evolutionary change through collective information processing. Alexander Flor related the world brain concept with current developments in global knowledge networking spawned by new information and communication technologies in an online paper, A Global Knowledge Network. He also discussed the collective mind within the context of social movements in Asia in a book Development Communication Praxis. Dave Pollard's restatement of Collective wisdom: "Many cognitive, coordination and cooperation problems are best solved by canvassing groups of reasonably informed, unbiased, engaged people. The group's answer is almost invariably much better than any individual expert's answer, even better than the best answer of the experts in the group."
Contemporary definition and research
Harnessing the collective wisdom of people is an area of intense contemporary interest and cutting-edge research. The application of the term to methodologies that are designed to harness collective wisdom is credited to the work of Alexander Christakis and his group, As the challenges society faces today are of extreme complexities, the only solution is to develop technologies capable of harnessing the Collective Intelligence and collective wisdom of many people, or even crowds. The Institute for 21st Century Agoras founded in 2002 by Alexander Christakis, the Wisdom Research Network of the University of Chicago launched in 2010 and the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence founded by Thomas W. Malone in 2007 are some examples.
Collective Wisdom Initiative
The Collective Wisdom Initiative was formed in 2000 with the support of the Fetzer Institute for the purpose of gathering material on the research, theory and practice of collective wisdom. It was a collaboration of practitioners and academics in areas such as business, health care, mental health, education, criminal justice and conflict resolution. Several of the founding members subsequently co-authored The Power of Collective Wisdom. In this, six stances or principles, which support the power of collective wisdom are presented: deep listening, suspension of certainty, seeing whole systems/seeking diverse perspectives, respect for other/group discernment, welcoming all that is arising, and trust in the transcendent. Two strands of thought relating to collective wisdom follow very different paths. The first suggests that aggregates of people and information will succeed in advancing wisdom, that wisdom is built on the accumulation of data and knowledge, without a need for judgement or qualification. Some have faulted this belief for failing to take into account the importance of 'adaptive assessment'. The second argues that wisdom is only possible in reflective states of mind, including meta cognition. According to Alan Briskin, wisdom requires systematic reflection on the inner self and the outer states of social order. Mark Baurelein has made the case that the hyper communication of knowledge has hobbled rather than promoted intellectual development.
