The Theory of Spontaneous Order and Cultural Evolution in the Social Theory of F.A. Hayek

F.A. Hayek is perhaps the most broad ranging scholar to address economic issues since Adam Smith. His work has spanned across technical economics (1928, 1933a, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1941, 1945), philosophy of the social sciences (1943, 1952a, 1967, 1978), theoretical psychology (1952b), legal philosophy (1960, 1973, 1976, 1979a), and most recently social anthropology (1979b, 1988). Despite the diverse nature of his research, it has a common theme: How do social institutions work, through the filter of the human mind, to coordinate human affairs?

But Hayek's attempts to pursue this question come to us in scattered concentrations on various specific topics. This had led some scholars to miss the unity of his life-work. T.W. Hutchison, for example, argues that there is a fundamental dichotomy in Hayek's thought - a Hayek I, who is under the influence of Ludwig von Mises, and a Hayek II, who rejects Mises's praxeological method and embraces the methodological views of Karl Popper (Hutchison 1984: 176-232). Bruce Caldwell (1988) counters Hutchinson's interpretation. It wasn't Hayek who became a Popperian but Popper who became Hayekian. But Caldwell also sees a major transformation in Hayek's work. Due to the interwar intellectual debate over socialisteconomic calculation, Hayek was transformed from primarily a technical economist concerned with equilibrium theorizing to a broad social theorist concerned with the coordination problem in society in general.

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