HAYEK, THE "SPONTANEOUS ORDER" AND COMPLEXITY

Hayek regards complexity as specific to spontaneous orders or self-organizing structures. These orders are characterized by the phenomena of irreducible ignorance and emergence (of new properties of the whole which its separate parts do not possess) and by the incapacity to handle them. Their complexity involves methodological and epistemological as much as political implications (here again the non-control of the order). However, the critical assessment of the Hayekian approach reveals contradictions and a tendency to simplify the organizations leading to the simplification of the order itself, which he paradoxically considers as complex. The dual concept of the spontaneous order and even the author's conception of complexity can be questioned.