What a silly discussion. Hayek's source was Hayek: "In the natural sciences, we .. have learned that the interaction of different tendencies may produce what we call an _ORDER_, without any mind of our own kind regulating it. But we still refuse to recognize that the _SPONTANEOUS_ interplay of the actions of individuals may produce something which is not the deliberate object of their actions but an organism in which every part performs a necessary function for the continuance of the whole, without any human mind having devised it." -- F. A. Hayek, "The Trend of Economic Thinking", Inaugural Lecture delivered to the L.S.E on March 1, 1933. So Hayek was already using the language and notion of "spontaneous order" as early as 1933 -- _without_ having derived the exact phrase "spontaneous order" from anywhere. The language was already in his vocabulary, and the idea was already in his work. The only thing missing here is the exact phrase combination "spontaneous order" To repeat, the idea is here, the very words are here -- all Hayek needs to do is type them together. It's worth noting that Hayek himself makes it rather clear that his own original understanding of "spontaneous order" (the idea not the words) in social theory derived from Carl Menger, most particularly Menger's _Untersuchungen_. Greg Ransom