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". History 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. In 1767, the sociologist and historian Adam Ferguson described society as the "result of human action, but not the execution of any human design". However, the term “spontaneous order” seems to have been coined by Michael Polanyi in his essay, “The Growth of Thought in Society,” Economica 8 (November 1941): 428–56. The Austrian School of Economics, led by Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek made it a centerpiece in its social and economic thought. Hayek's theory of spontaneous order is the product of two related but distinct influences that do not always tend