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In this article, I compare the concepts of spontaneous order and stigmergy. First coined by obscure process philosopher Otis Lee in 1944, "spontaneous order" was adapted by Michael Polanyi and Friedrich August von Hayek to describe both human and nonhuman forms of order that emerge from local interactions. The phrase denotes a phenomenon of observable regularity that is more than the sum of its parts, unintended by any participant entities or agents. From its very inception, spontaneous order referred to a wide range of entities. Polanyi, as a chemist, was fascinated by autocatalytic chemical reactions. Similarly, already in his early interdisciplinary work on complexity Hayek references several types of spontaneous order. Later, Hayek would use the spontaneous order concept as a way of describing unplanned forms of social coordination in the human realm. These he calls kosmos, as distinct from organizations (taxis). In my view, by combining the idea of spontaneous order with the concept of stigmergy, we may deepen our understanding of such phenomena without needing to resort to an anthropocentric social theory. Stigmergy, first elaborated by entomologists researching the activities of social insects, refers to the construction of structures the scale of which surpasses the cognitive capacities of individual agents. Building on the work of both Hayekian scholars and researchers of stigmergy, we can obtain a theory of society applicable to human and nonhuman orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a novel analysis in the field of management and business organization. The innovation lies in evidencing the remarkable capacity through the emergence of unplanned spontaneous orders to originate highly efficient and effective management systems. Its main proposal involves examining the applicability of the contributions made by the Nobel Prize winner, Friedrich Hayek, in the realm of spontaneous orders to the field of business management and organization. The significance of this idea lies in the fact that by knowing and understanding the functioning of such orders, which arise in complex social systems, can facilitate a smoother and more successful transition from conventional hierarchical and pyramidal models to the new paradigm of agile and flexible organizations, which possess a greater ability to adapt and manage new information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This summary discusses the book "Toward a Hayekian Theory of Social Change," which explores the relevance of Hayek's ideas beyond economics. It delves into topics such as the interaction of culture with economics and government, liberal morality, common law, and unique applications of Hayek's work. The book also examines the concept of spontaneous order and its application to various phenomena, including science and the market. The text emphasizes the need for a deeper understanding of these interactions and tensions in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of social change. The reviewer finds the book worth reading and praises some of the contributions while also offering constructive criticism. [Extracted from the article]

The article concerns the book by Beata Polanowska-Szygulska titled Harmonia i dysonans. Wokół rozmów z oksfordzkimi filozofami (Harmony and Dissonance: On Talks with Oxford Philosophers). The author polemicizes with her on the role of August Friedrich von Hayek's philosophy in the process of the evolution of capitalism and especially in establishing the so-called capitalism of surveillance. The article contains also some remarks concerning the reasons of Polish surrender to Hayek's vision of capitalism during the Polish transformation from socialism to capitalism and some memories of the persons, places and political processes important for the author, and also for the reviewer, of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to the socio-philosophical legacy of Friedrich von Hayek, one of the founders of neoliberalism and a representative of the Austrian School of Economics. In this regard, this text is an attempt to rethink Hayek's work in three main aspects: as an initiator of the return of liberalism to its ideological foundations from the Enlightenment, as an ideologue of neoliberalism and as a consistent critic of Keynesian capitalism and socialism. Here are some weaknesses in his teaching, both in terms of capitalism and in terms of social liberalism and socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Cities are information systems by its social and physical components. The data of these components create a wider picture in urban texture than it was designed by planners and designer in urban practices. The idea of collecting the data and composing models of spontaneous actions in urban simulations can add different dimensions to planning ideas in social terms and spatial texture. The issue is to find out how these components can be better related with each other to let citizens be urban planners as well up to some level, and what level that would be. The aim of the project is to bring back the social impact of the whole city as linking the hubs of Karaköy and Kabataş through the waterfront, also reawakening the collective memory of the port, by preserving the texture of warehouses form Ottoman Empire. The final outcome would be understanding how effectively project would be able to create the dynamics that have been proposed, and whether there have been other spontaneous actions thought the designed area.

We argue that gender is a dynamic and fluid social category. Gender is widely understood to structure human relations, shape norms, and afford status to individuals and groups. However, gender cannot be construed as a predetermined or fixed phenomenon and/or as structured simply by biological imperative. Understanding gender requires an appreciation of discovery processes of expression, experimentation, and evolution, interwoven in culture, politics, and the economy. Because gender as a discovery process is dynamically produced through decentralized human interactions, we analyze gender as a species of spontaneous order, as described in the Smithian-Mengerian tradition of liberal political economy. We illustrate how gender discovery takes place by detailing the complex and emergent patterns of gender performance across a wide variety of social settings, especially market interactions. This paper shows how markets facilitate gender discoveries through the symbolic use of products, medical and other health innovations, and the use of commercial sites to facilitate shared gender meanings and understandings. Although the centrality of gender roles to human culture through place and time is appreciated, we believe that gender as a discovery process carries normative weight. Respect for pluralism and liberal individualism implies tolerance of gender diversity and experimentation with gender fluidity. Overall, we propose that liberalism (properly construed) offers the most robust framework both for understanding gender and for morally upholding the value of gender expression and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are information systems by its social and physical components. The data of these components create a wider picture in urban texture than it was designed by planners and designer in urban practices. The idea of collecting the data and composing models of spontaneous actions in urban simulations can add different dimensions to planning ideas in social terms and spatial texture. The issue is to find out how these components can be better related with each other to let citizens be urban planners as well up to some level, and what level that would be. The aim of the project is to bring back the social impact of the whole city as linking the hubs of Karaköy and Kabataş through the waterfront, also reawakening the collective memory of the port, by preserving the texture of warehouses form Ottoman Empire. The final outcome would be understanding how effectively project would be able to create the dynamics that have been proposed, and whether there have been other spontaneous actions thought the designed area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not rarely, economy has been transformed into an autonomous science in relation to the individual, aiming to improve certain abstract indicators, often different or even divergent from their expectations. In this sense, there is a mistaken but quite widespread belief that there is no direct implication between the economic and political domains, that they are completely separate entities. In other words, individual freedom is a political matter, while material well-being is an economic one. Rejecting such a dichotomy, the “classical” liberals of the 20th century (neoliberals) adapted economic discourse to social explanation. Furthermore, they emphasised the neutral nature of the economic science and understood reason only as capable of discovering and explaining the connection between means and ends. Therefore, there is no liberal purpose of man (the individual, humanity), as liberalism offers the path to a plurality of purposes, each of them having a particular character and being the subjective, rationally unprovable action of each individual. Based on these premises, this study argues that if the economy continues to be the instantiation of human action, then only freedom can foster performance and maximise the way in which the economy itself becomes a component of a world that places the individual at its centre. From such a perspective, it becomes useful and necessary to investigate how Ludwig von Mises (re)writes economics as human action, and how his successor, Friedrich Hayek, (re)defines rationalism to distance it from its illicit use within totalitarian systems. What the two philosophers and economists actually reveal is the fundamental and founding connection between freedom and economic performance. Moreover, identifying several arguments against state intervention in the economy highlights once again the validity of the necessary relationship between economy and freedom.

Bernard Mandeville is often cited as one of the most influential thinkers on the theories of spontaneous social order. According to Friedrich August Hayek, B. Mandeville, in his The fable of the Bees (1714), enables a completely transformed understanding of social order. Is the order we observe in society the product of human design or does it, conversely, come about spontaneously? Far from being the product of some kind of human intention, the order observed in society is the result of a self-regulating and self-perpetuating process.Mandeville’s approach aims to invalidate any form of social constructivism. Society is therefore seen as an “edifice without an architect” (Gilles Dostaler, Le libéralisme de Hayek). Mandeville, like the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, considers social order to be the outcome of human action rather than human intention.However, neither Mandeville nor Hayek succeeds in eliminating human design in their approach of social order. This paper seeks to establish that human design is even at work in the theory of spontaneous social order.

Can we say that the mafia is a spontaneous order, an unplanned but orderly association, the result of human action but not of human design? The paper investigates how the lack of a founding moment for the entity called the "mafia" points toward a positive answer. It seems plausible to say that the continuous turnover of different foreign dominations over the island of Sicily generated two important phenomena: 1) a lack of trust between individuals, and between individuals and institutions, and 2) the absence of centralized institutions recognized as the centre of the monopoly of force that would have been able to dictate and enforce a code of social conduct. These two phenomena created both the need for mediators for individual transactions, and more generally, a demand for the role of institutions. Mafia people filled the gap, initially as "persons of respect" whose authority was recognized, accepted and feared, and then by becoming actual institutions themselves, blending with official institutions and creating a recognized and followed code of social conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Spontaneous order literature (“Tradition of Spontaneous Order” (1982) by Norman Barry; The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order (1987) by Ronald Hamowy; "Spontaneous Order" (1989) by Robert Sugden; "The Theory of Spontaneous Order and Cultural Evolution in the Social Theory of F.A. Hayek" (1990) by Peter J. Boettke; Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political Economy (2001) by Peter J. Boettke; Hayek's Liberalism and Its Origins: His Idea of Spontaneous Order and the Scottish Enlightenment (2001) by Christina Petsoulas; "The Origin and Scope of Hayek’s Idea of Spontaneous Order" (2007) by Louis Hunt; "Spontaneous Order" (2015) by Daniel J. D'Amico; "Spontaneous Economic Order" (2016) by Yong Tao) has long downplayed the ideas of Michael Polanyi. When attempts were being made to change this attitude ("Polanyi on Liberal Neutrality" (1996/97) by C. P. Goodman; "Michael Polanyi and Spontaneous Order, 1941-1951" (1997) by Struan Jacobs), they mostly suggested to replace Hayek with Polanyi as the key figure who recoined the concept for the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, scholars of Austrian economics jumped into the arena of competing priority claims ("Against Polanyi-Centrism: Hayek and the Re-Emergence of “Spontaneous Order”" (2005) by John P. Bladel) and claimed that Hayek, von Mises and Röpke have argued for such an order long before Polanyi’s first writing using this terminology was published in 1948. Only a few accounts attempted to present some kind of balance in this respect (Adam Smith's Political Philosophy: The Invisible Hand and Spontaneous Order (2006) by Craig Smith; The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Volume 15: The Market and Other Orders (2014) by Bruce Caldwell; "Friedrich Hayek and Michael Polanyi in Correspondence" (2016) by Struan Jacobs and Phil Mullins; The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance (2016) by Douglas Spencer; "Editorial Introduction to ‘Collectivist Planning’ by Michael Polanyi (1940)" (2019) by Geoffrey M. Hodgson). This paper aims to explore the so far untold characteristics of Polanyi’s spontaneous order theory through analysing archival materials and doing so offers a reason for reconsidering what we have to know about the history of spontaneous order theory. And this reconsideration might lead to developing new, more fine-grained and viable theories of spontaneous order, including those that can treat claims of spontaneous order and claims of social justice not as incompatible but as compatible aims in ordering social affairs. This perspective should, no doubt, come in handy in our increasingly polarized societies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberalism continues to be the best system guaranteeing peace, security, economic and political freedom, and prosperity, but the necessary price is individual responsibility. It is only by (self-) limiting a part of personal freedom, that one can ensure the proper and spontaneous functioning of society and the market. An international spontaneous order based on responsibility, freedom, tolerance, and cooperation might be the best paradigm for preserving liberalism today. And preserving liberalism means strengthening the individual commitment to an open society; it requires three proposals aimed to preserve and relaunch liberalism. 1) Rejecting populist, collectivist authoritarianism and omnipotent, ever-present government. 2) Enlarging the spontaneous Great Society and international institutions. 3) Enhancing capitalist free-market economy and individual responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the appropriate role of the state in economic policy-making? This paper shows that Friedrich Hayek, who is often considered a proponent of laissez-faire liberalism, offers three different answers to this problem. First, Hayek argues that the state should provide a legal framework for competitive markets. Second, he proposes to employ the rule of law criteria – generality, equality, and certainty – to distinguish permissible from non-permissible state interventions. Third, he downplays the importance of deliberate legislation and moves closer to the Misesian idea of a minimal state. The paper considers these answers in light of Hayek's analysis of the knowledge problem. We suggest that a Hayekian approach to economic policy-making should focus on improving the framework of general rules that guide individual behavior, thereby enabling spontaneous ordering processes and reducing the epistemological burden placed on policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes telework as the evolution of the way of providing the service associated with modes of business organization relating it to Hayek's idea of progress and as a result helps to overcome the economic, environmental and health challenges of society. The analysis of telework under this line, invites us to reflect on the evolutionary rationalism based on the spontaneous order that allows us to understand telework from its origins. The research is of descriptive type with qualitative approach. It is concluded that telework arises naturally and evidences the progress of scientific research identifying technology as its main essence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of Michael Polanyi's critique of economic planning. It portrays how the focal point of his critique shifted from addressing the 'spirit,' 'social consciousness,' and 'public emotion' of the people supporting planned economies to addressing the administrative 'unmanageability' and the logical impossibility of economic planning. Polanyi developed thought experiments of imaginary economies, contrasted the 'pyramid of authority' with the polygons of liberty, and explained organic (spontaneous order) and inorganic (corporate order) ways of adjusting economic relations. He attempted to relax the Leviathan of Soviet economics, and drew the conclusion that mathematics is not sufficient in itself to properly address the economy. Eventually, Polanyi developed an institutionalist approach in order to be able to address both the variability of market economies and the failures of socialist 'super-planners' who claimed to eliminate the drift of individual economic adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study allowed to analyze if evolutionary rationalism is the philosophical foundation that explains the source of knowledge of true liberalism. The approach was qualitative because it was based on the description and understanding of the political philosophy of liberalism, for which the grounded theory of the two aspects in political philosophies that explain liberalism was used: English liberalism, based on spontaneous order (rationalism-evolutionist) and French liberalism, based on the built order (rationalism-constructivist). However, classical liberalism arises from the discovery of a spontaneous order of social reality, product of actions of individuals and not as a result of human design; It appears spontaneously through the progressive limitations imposed on public power caused by people's distrust, the desire to protect life, liberty and property from the arbitrariness of political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to the socio-philosophical legacy of Friedrich von Hayek, one of the founders of neoliberalism and a representative of the Austrian School of Economics. In this regard, this text is an attempt to rethink Hayek's work in three main aspects: as an initiator of the return of liberalism to its ideological foundations from the Enlightenment, as an ideologue of neoliberalism and as a consistent critic of Keynesian capitalism and socialism. Here are some weaknesses in his teaching, both in terms of capitalism and in terms of social liberalism and socialism [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential for gains from trade between Austrian and behavioral economics, with a focus on how the two schools of thoughts can constructively critique each other. Among other things, the Austrian critique of behavioral economics would urge it to jettison its restrictive and axiomatic definition of rationality, and to treat humans as active agents rather than passive recipients of environmental and cognitive influences. Meanwhile, the behavioral critique of Austrian economics would push it to take more seriously the fundamental question of how individuals arrive at choices and to analyze how such choices can interact with 'micro-institutional' choice environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of a growing body of scholarship that has cast doubt on the analytic import of spontaneous order, the purpose of my article is to rethink the intellectual relationship between Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek by suggesting that reading spontaneous order into Burke's thought introduces greater tensions between the two thinkers than prior scholars have suggested. One crucial tension, I suggest, is that Hayek believed that contractual arrangements, competitive markets and the rule of law could sustain the growth of social order, while Burke maintained that particular social institutions and practices should remain protected from the full power of voluntary contracts and exchange relations. I conclude by suggesting that the tensions between Hayek and Burke could serve as complementary instruments, rather than as foes, in strengthening the liberal project in modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the transfer of dissipative structure theory from thermodynamics to the social sciences. In our opinion, this transfer can contribute to a theory of social evolution where the relation between individual actions and social structures is a focal point. Central to the argument is the idea that dissipative structures emerge in social systems like they do in other open systems with inflows triggered by constraints. The transfer delivers a complexity‐informed model for the different phases of social evolution. While there are average periods where the prevailing 'norms' of social behaviour do not change in a significant way, there are also bifurcation periods where the 'norm' of behaviour may change due to the amplification of deviating individual behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do individual human minds create languages, legal systems, scientific theories, and technologies? From a cognitive science viewpoint, such collective phenomena may be considered a type of distributed computation in which human minds together solve computational problems beyond any individual. This viewpoint may also shift our perspective on individual minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social sciences have been divided into departmental silos for far too long, yielding at best partial insights among economists, political scientists, and sociologists. The most influential attempt at integration, economic imperialism, distorted our understanding of processes with looser constraints than among producers in competitive markets. The theory of spontaneous order, first developed by Michael Polanyi and Friedrich Hayek in the 1940s and 1950s, offers a more promising framework for interdisciplinary social theory. It does not rely on unrealistic assumptions of maximizing behavior, unlike rational choice theory borrowed from neoclassical economics. It is compatible with psychological findings on human behavior, recognizes the heterogeneity of resources and constraints in different social orders, and pays attention to historical processes of individual and social learning. Spontaneous-order theory provides a unified framework for four key orders of decentralized human interaction: the cultural, democratic, market, and scientific orders. Each such order is associated with order-specific resources. Order participants face constraints, but these constraints are not always the same, even within the same order. For example, competing producers face relatively tight break-even constraints, which make their actions unusually predictable. In contrast, consumers in a market order or politicians in a democracy face looser constraints. They are not compelled to maximize utilities or votes, but their relatively loose constraints nevertheless make many potential actions infeasible. Consumption requires money and policies require votes and resources. Exact predictions become impossible, but spontaneous-order analyses offer the promise of more reliable pattern predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of Friedrich Hayek have focused on his theorization of spontaneous order and its relationship to his views on freedom and market individualism. For many scholars, the impersonal nature of Hayek's spontaneous order, which optimally coordinates human action without human coordination, and/or Hayek's contention that freedom consists of the exercise of individual choice in a market, reveals Hayek's neoliberal project to replace or erase the social domain of human life and activity. This article makes the claim that two different, but related, versions of the social exist in Hayek's writings. The logic of his first and prominent view of social order as spontaneous order depends, I argue, upon a second account of the social, found in Hayek's writings on money, which consists of forms of conscious and collective social integration and subject formation that the first view requires but cannot account for. In this way, Hayek's social order is sustained not spontaneously but by money-based collective activities and social(ized) subjectivities that make it possible, and his neoliberal project thus depends on fundamental, if disavowed, connections between the social and the political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relation between conservatism and the doctrine of economic liberalism from the perspective of Roger Scruton's critique to Friedrich A. Hayek. We carry out this attempt through three means: first, Hayek's concepts of negative freedom, spontaneous order, and catallaxy are analyzed; second, the English philosopher's critique of Hayek is explained; and finally, Scruton's social and economic theory is presented as a response of the inconsistencies of economic liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to examine the legacy of Menger’s theory of social institutions. We argue that Menger’s insights about the origin of social structures inspired later contributions in three main areas: theory of spontaneous order, theory of money, and theory of law.