The last three chapters examined the idea of a spontaneous eco-
nomic order, analysing the mechanism of adjustment and rule-
following to which Hayek attributes the generation of such order,
and discussing the features that render it, in his view, uniquely
valuable. Now I want to explore what further applications the
idea of a spontaneous order may have in the social world. That
there exist many spontaneous social orders other than that of the
market is, for Hayek, beyond doubt. He defines social theory as
the systematic study of spontaneous orders ( 1949: 67; 1952a: 39;
1967: 71-2; 1973: 37), maintaining that an individual may often
be a member not only of the comprehensive spontaneous order of
society but also 'of numerous other spontaneous sub-orders' ( 1973:
47). He advances the same thesis in different form when he de-
scribes spontaneous economic order as just one 'instance of a
general method of indirectly creating an order in situations where
the phenomena are far too complex to allow us the creation of an
order by separately putting each element in its appropriate place'
( 1967: 92). By making these claims Hayek implies that the fact of
its wide applicability proves the theoretical power of the idea of
a spontaneous social order and that this, in turn, once more con-
firms the soundness of his endeavour to explain the market pro-
cess in terms of such order. It is for this reason that we must
examine the general idea of a spontaneous order.

To keep the discussion carefully focused and to avoid confusion,
a distinction should be recalled that I made earlier between two
basically different categories of unprompted social orders, a dis-
tinction whose importance Hayek and his commentators have
usually failed consistently to observe. This is the contrast between
order as a network of interactions among numerous parties and
order as an established system of rules or norms. An awareness of
this distinction is imperative if we are to make progress in our

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