ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a description and specification of a process that aggregates separate and incremental actions into a social macro-outcome an invisible-hand explanation. The invisible hand is a metaphor for dynamic social processes which explain aggregate and ordered social patterns and outcomes as specific kinds of unintended consequences of human action. The presence of invisible hands has been recognized at least since the Scottish philosophers of the eighteenth century. At first the term “invisible hand” had a theological connotation, referring to “the invisible hand of Providence”. It should be clear by now that the onus of an invisible-hand explanation lies on the process, or mechanism, that aggregates the dispersed actions into the cumulative spontaneous pattern. However, invisible-hand explanations should also be able to account for the unintended consequences that arise in addition to those intended. There could be a continuum between pure intentional explanations and pure invisible-hand explanations.
