The social sciences have been divided into departmental silos for far too long, yielding at best partial insights among economists, political scientists, and sociologists. The most influential attempt at integration, economic imperialism, distorted our understanding of processes with looser constraints than among producers in competitive markets. The theory of spontaneous order, first developed by Michael Polanyi and Friedrich Hayek in the 1940s and 1950s, offers a more promising framework for interdisciplinary social theory. It does not rely on unrealistic assumptions of maximizing behavior, unlike rational choice theory borrowed from neoclassical economics. It is compatible with psychological findings on human behavior, recognizes the heterogeneity of resources and constraints in different social orders, and pays attention to historical processes of individual and social learning. Spontaneous-order theory provides a unified framework for four key orders of decentralized human interaction: the cultural, democratic, market, and scientific orders. Each such order is associated with order-specific resources. Order participants face constraints, but these constraints are not always the same, even within the same order. For example, competing producers face relatively tight break-even constraints, which make their actions unusually predictable. In contrast, consumers in a market order or politicians in a democracy face looser constraints. They are not compelled to maximize utilities or votes, but their relatively loose constraints nevertheless make many potential actions infeasible. Consumption requires money and policies require votes and resources. Exact predictions become impossible, but spontaneous-order analyses offer the promise of more reliable pattern predictions.

社会科学被划分为部门孤岛太久了，经济学家、政治学家和社会学家最多只能产生部分见解。最有影响力的一体化尝试，即经济帝国主义，扭曲了我们对比竞争市场中的生产者更宽松的约束过程的理解。自发秩序理论由迈克尔·波兰尼（Michael Polanyi）和弗里德里希·哈耶克（Friedrich Hayek）在 1940 年代和 1950 年代首次提出，为跨学科社会理论提供了一个更有希望的框架。它不依赖于最大化行为的不切实际的假设，不像从新古典经济学中借来的理性选择理论。它与人类行为的心理学发现相一致，承认不同社会秩序中资源和约束的异质性，并关注个人和社会学习的历史过程。自发秩序理论为分散的人类互动的四个关键秩序提供了一个统一的框架：文化秩序、民主秩序、市场秩序和科学秩序。每个这样的订单都与特定于订单的资源相关联。订单参与者面临约束，但这些约束并不总是相同的，即使在同一订单内也是如此。例如，相互竞争的生产商面临着相对严格的收支平衡约束，这使得他们的行为异常可预测。相比之下，市场秩序中的消费者或民主国家中的政客面临更宽松的约束。他们没有被迫最大化效用或投票，但他们相对宽松的约束仍然使许多潜在的行动不可行。消费需要钱，政策需要选票和资源。