Improving Spontaneous Orders

Abstract

One of the most remarkable discoveries in intellectual history is the insight that an orderly outcome can emerge spontaneously, without a conscious mind having designed it. The idea is perhaps most associated with Darwin’s (1859) analysis of biological evolution, but it substantially predates Darwin in the social sciences. Adam Ferguson (1767) clearly articulates the concept of spontaneous order when he notes that “every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (Part III, Section II). Adam Smith (1776) described this same idea by noting how people are led by an invisible hand, to use one of the most well-known phrases coined by an economist. Friedrich Hayek (1948, 1967) published collections of essays that further explained and supported the idea that a society can have orderly and productive institutions that are “The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design,” to use the title of one of his 1967 essays.