Thursday 3 December 2009

Spontaneous responses to stimuli

What is spontaneous is not the historical origin of an order. Spontaneity is an attribute concerning the type of response of a given order to the changes in its environment. When the change in the disposition of the elements of an order is generated in response to changes in the input of data from the environment by an authority that seeks to obtain a certain effect in that environment, the said order is a created one. A spontaneous order changes the disposition of its elements in response to the stimuli from the environment following not any purpose of any conscious authority, but a pattern built as a negative feedback system. This pattern of response to the input of data from the environment may either come from tradition or be created by a legislator; it may either lack of a historical beginning or have one. What is important is that that pattern provides the order with a mechanism of automatic adjustment to the changes in the given data. In this sense, spontaneity does not mean absence of historical origin but of a purposive source of change.