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Date: | Fri Sep 29 13:03:12 2006 |
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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)
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