sentences:  Émile Durkheim argues in "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" (1912) 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 Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose concept of the noosphere was a precursor to the term collective intelligence.