In the biological sciences the idea of evolution  
predates Darwin, but an explanatory mechanism was  
absent. Providing an explanatory mechanism was  
Darwin's great achievement.  
  
It seems to me that the idea of spontaneous order is  
not very interesting in the absence of an explanatory  
mechanism. After all, as John Womack points out there  
are many historical antecedents of the idea. Marx and  
Engels could also be added.*  
  
I have read quit a bit of the Austrian literature and  
I find little or nothing about the mechanism that  
explains spontaneous order. I think Andy Dennis  
formulates the appropriate question: did Hayek in fact  
reach his goal in his study of society as a complex  
system, or was he still searching for it at the end of  
his life?  
  
-- Michael Nuwer  
  
* "[D]ivision of labour is a system of production  
which has grown up spontaneously and continues to grow  
behind the backs of the producers." (Capital I,  
Chapter 3)  
  
"Co-operation based on division of labour, in other  
words, manufacture, commences as a spontaneous  
formation." (Capital I, Chapter 14)  
  
"In the midst of the old division of labor, grown up  
spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had  
governed the whole of society, now arose division of  
labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the  
factory." (Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and  
Scientific)