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)