ABSTRACT
A central role in Hayek's thought has been played by his insights into the problems posed by the phenomenon of dispersed knowledge. These insights first emerged as a result of Hayek's participation in the inter-war debate on the possibility of socialist economic calculation and were crystallized in his classic 1945 paper ‘The use of knowledge in society’ (1949b). Although these insights were originally born out of Hayek's economics, for the past three decades they have nourished those profound contributions to other branches of social philosophy which have come to dominate Hayek's recent work.
