Spontaneous Order

General Overview

The term spontaneous order describes the fact that well structured social patterns (institutions and conventions of today such as property rights, money, trade, law, contracts, exchange, languages, honesty, moral sytems, and ethics), which appear to be the result of of a rational, omniscient mind are actually the outcomes of spontaneous forces emerging as a consequence of individuals following self-interested ends and have evolved through a complex mechanism of behaviors and self-interest passed down through tradition, teaching, and imitation. Individuals pursuing their own interests conform their behavior to common rules and constraints, which enables them to successfully interact among themselves. Thus, spontaneous order is a product of human action and not of human design (1).

Theorists of spontaneous order reject the idea that reason solely, which is itself the result of an evolutionary selection process, can allow humans to build an extended order of human society and civilization. Rather, this can be achieved much more efficiently through evolutionary development which allows decentralization of decisions and division of authority to extend the human order. The theory of spontaneous order is concerned with regularites in societies and orders of events that are not a deliberate product of human mind (i.e. constitutional law) or are akin to purely natural phenomena (i.e. weather) (Barry 8).

The history of spontaneous order has its roots in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightment, when thinkers like Adam Smith, David Hume, Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Reid integrated principles of spontaneous order into general social philosophy (Barry7). --note: Smith and Ferguson did not regard all the unintended consequences of freedom as being necessarily beneficial (Barry 22).

The economist who has made the greatest contributions to the concept of spontaneous order was Friedrich A. Hayek. It was he who applied the term "spontaneous order" to define "a system which has developed not through the central direction or patronage of one or a few individuals but through the unintended consequences of the decisions of myriad individuals each pursuing their own interests through voluntary exchange, cooperation, and trial and error" See More Hayek Quotes http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Politics/Liberty/Hayek.html

begins with the tradition of Adam Smith and the invisible hand. Adam Smith was one of the first to recognize the importance and efficiency of the market to regulate peoples behavior without requiring the concious intervention of those involved. Hayek and others applied these ideas of unconcious regulation of the market to social behaviors and institutions, applying the term "spontaneous order

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