ABSTRACT
Hayek’s view of human society has at its core a view that is not easily pinned down, so an effort is required to reveal more precisely what it is, and the methods by which he arrives at it. A good place to start may be this statement:
[M]an’s actions are largely successful, not merely in the primitive stage but perhaps even more so in civilization, because they are adapted both to the particular facts which he knows and to a great many other facts he does not and cannot know. And this adaptation to the general circumstances that surround him is brought about by his observance of rules which he has not designed and often does not even know explicitly, although he is able to honour them in action.1
Hayek enlarges on this in regard to economic relations by quoting from the central European economist and political scientist, Josef Schumpeter: ‘We can establish certain theorems about [economic relations], but we can never observe all’, and adds:
