Spontaneous order is one of the most important concepts in the
social sciences, and also one of the most maligned. It’s most
closely associated with Hayek, but it has roots going back to at
least the 18th century English and Scottish Enlightenments.
Thinkers like Bernard Mandeville, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and
David Hume all used some kind of spontaneous order framework.
They knew that not every design requires a designer. Nobody
designed languages, for example. They emerge and continually
evolve on their own, with nobody deliberately directing the
process. The economy is also a spontaneous order, even though
most people think it has to be be consciously directed. Nobody
is in charge of food distribution for New York or Paris, and yet
those great, farmless cities are still fed every day. It’s an
everyday miracle if you think about it. The reason that a lot of
non-economists are skeptical or unaware of spontaneous order is
that it’s a difficult concept for the human brain to comprehend.
We’re not wired to. B