Fri Sep 29 08:10:59 EDT 2006
My memory is different from Barkley's. Though I was at JMU on Wed and
Thursday, I do not remember having said anything about the origin of the
term "spontaneous order" while I was there. Jack Bladel has researched the
topic pretty thoroughly, so I would defer to him.
Reading Anthony Waterman's post was the first time I had heard of the
claim that it was from Mill. Perhaps he got it from Linda Raeder, if so,
did she provide evidence (I have not seen her 2002 book)? Hayek was a
Mill scholar, of course, but whether he picked it up from reading Mill is
difficult to know, as to my knowledge Hayek himself never said this. But
as Bladel said, it certainly is possible that he did.
In the end, though, I wonder, how much does it really matter?
Bruce Caldwell