Spontaneous order, also named self-organization in the hard sciences, is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. The term "self-organization" is more often used for physical changes and biological processes, while "spontaneous order" is typically used to describe the emergence of various kinds of social orders in human social networks from the behavior of a combination of self-interested individuals who are not intentionally trying to create order through planning. Proposed examples of systems which evolved through spontaneous order or self-organization include the evolution of life on Earth, language, crystal structure, the Internet, Wikipedia, and a free market economy.
Spontaneous orders are to be distinguished from organizations as being scale-free networks, while organizations are hierarchical networks. Further, organizations can be (and often are) a part of spontaneous social orders, but the reverse is not true. While organizations are created and controlled by specific individuals or groups, spontaneous orders are created and controlled by no one in particular. In economics and the social sciences, spontaneous order is defined as "the result of human actions, not of human design".
In economics, spontaneous order is an equilibrium behavior among self-interested individuals, which is most likely to evolve and survive, obeying the natural selection process "survival of the likeliest".
According to Murray Rothbard, the philosopher Zhuangzi (369–286 BCE) was the first to propose the idea of spontaneous order. Zhuangzi rejected the authoritarianism of Confucianism, writing that there "has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success]." 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 developed and inquired into the idea of the market as a spontaneous order.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Economic liberalism is a political and economic ideology that supports a market economy based on individualism and private property in the means of production. Adam Smith is considered one of the primary initial writers on economic liberalism, and his writing is generally regarded as representing the economic expression of 19th-century liberalism up until the Great Depression and rise of Keynesianism in the 20th century. Historically, economic liberalism arose in response to feudalism and mercantilism.
Libertarianism (from libertaire, "libertarian"; from libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's encroachment on and violations of individual liberties; emphasizing the rule of law, pluralism, cosmopolitanism, cooperation, civil and political rights, bodily autonomy, freedom of association, free trade, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, individualism, and voluntary association.
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, constitutional government and privacy rights.
Self-organization is the spontaneous formation of ordered patterns and networks from a population of comparatively simple elements or individuals with no prior information on neither the formation process nor the final organization. While the construction ...
EPFL2022
Aquatic vegetation is ubiquitous in lowland rivers, and it is typically present in the shape of spatial self-organized patches of biomass. In this work, we mathematically define the threshold conditions for the incipient formation of self-organized vegetat ...
2022
We investigate phase separation in a chiral fluid, made of spinning ferromagnetic colloids that interact both via hydrodynamic and dipolar forces and collectively organize into separated circulating clusters. We show that, at high spinning frequency, hydro ...