A couple of comments/questions:  
  
First, are there definitions of the following that distinguish them and  
show their relation:  unintended consequences, invisible hand, and  
spontaneous order (and, one might even add here, 'macroeconomic  
paradoxes' such as the paradox of thrift)? I have always wondered  
whether, e.g., the invisible hand and macroeconomic paradoxes are  
examples of some more general phenomenon, such as unintended  
consequences.  There doesn't seem to be any a priori reason that these  
phenomena must be either socially beneficial or costly, does there?  
  
Second, as far as I know, and if anyone knows more about all this I  
would appreciate any leads or hints, Michael Polanyi coined the term  
spontaneous order in the 1930s in Manchester.  At that time, he and his  
colleague at Manchester, Adolph Lowe, were engaged in private and public  
professional communications on a number of issues, and Lowe started  
using the term "spontaneous conformity."  I have an intuition that this  
cannot be a coincidence, but I do not have any proof of which term came  
first, who influenced whom, etc.  I visited Manchester in 1999 and  
searched the archives at the university, not much on Lowe, more on  
Polanyi, all pretty disorganized, but besides some interesting  
correspondence and some book reviews I hadn't seen before, I came up  
with zilch.  Anybody know anything?  
  
Shameless self-promotion...people might be interested in a paper I  
wrote:  
  
"Must Spontaneous Order Be Unintended?: Exploring the Possibilities for  
Consciously Enhancing Creative Discovery and Imaginative  
Problem-Solving," in H. S. Jensen, L. M. Richter, and M. T. Vendelo  
(eds.): THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, Edward Elgar, 2003.  
  
Thanks,  
  
Mathew Forstater