Let me offer this excerpt from a minor pre-Hayekian:  
  
  
Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 1767. [Part Third,  
Of the History of Policy and Arts]. [With many thanks to Rod Hay for making  
this cut & paste possible].  
  
  
  
Mankind, in following the present sense of their minds, in striving to  
remove inconveniencies, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages,  
arrive at ends which even their imagination could not anticipate, and pass  
on, like other animals, in the track of their nature, without perceiving its  
end. He who first said, 'I will appropriate this field: I will leave it to  
my heirs;' did not perceive, that he was laying the foundation of civil laws  
and political establishments. He who first ranged himself under a leader,  
did not perceive, that he was setting the example of a permanent  
subordination, under the pretence of which, the rapacious were to seize his  
possessions, and the arrogant to lay claim to his service.  
  
  Men, in general, are sufficiently disposed to occupy themselves in forming  
projects and schemes: but he who would scheme and project for others, will  
find an opponent in every person who is disposed to scheme for himself. Like  
the winds, that come we know not whence, and blow whithersoever they list,  
the forms of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin; they  
arise, long before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not from the  
speculations, of men. The croud of mankind, are directed in their  
establishments and measures, by the circumstances in which they are placed;  
and seldom are turned from their way, to follow the plan of any single  
projector.  
  
  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.  If Cromwell said, That a man  
never mounts higher, than when he knows not whither he is going; it may with  
more reason be affirmed of communities, that they admit of the greatest  
revolutions where no change is intended, and that the most refined  
politicians do not always know whither they are leading the state by their  
projects.  
  
  
  
Still, the point made by John Womack on the spontaneous order of a Boeing  
747 is valid.  Should we be talking about a "spontaneous order of embedded  
hierarchical commands"?  (BTW where is Coase, Chandler and DH Robertson in  
this discussion?).  
  
  
Nicholas J. Theocarakis