History
According to Murray Rothbard, Zhuangzi (369 BCE - 286 BCE) was the first to work out the idea of spontaneous order. The philosopher rejected the authorianism of Confucianism, writing that there "has been such a thing as letting making alone; there has never been such a thing a governing mankind ." He articulated an early form of spontaneous order, asserting that "good order results spontaneously when things are let alone", a concept later "developed particularly by Proudhon in the nineteenth" century.
The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment were the first to seriously develop and inquire into the idea of the market as a spontaneous order. The sociologist and historian Adam Ferguson described the phenomenon of spontaneous order in society as the "result of human action, but not the execution of any human design".
The Austrian School of Economics, led by Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, would later refine the concept and use it as a centerpiece in its social and economic thought.
Read more about this topic: Spontaneous Order
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