Of Social Snowflakes (re-post)

Steven Horwitz

I'm not a great believer in re-posting old blog entries, but I'm going to make an exception today.  The post of mine below originally appeared on Liberty and Power on Christmas Day 2005.  Of all the blog posts I've ever written, I think this remains one of the best.  Its message also seems appropriate as we near the end of the year, with many snowflakes on the ground, and as Congress seems bound and determined to ignore the core of its message.  I repost it with only one minor edit to add a missing word. So for those of you who haven't read it before, enjoy "Of Social Snowflakes."

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My RSS reader this morning brought me this post from Marginal Revolution, which contains a spectacular close-up picture of a snowflake, taken from a book of such pictures. As I hope it does for you, just looking at that photo brought me up short and made me stop in awe, reverence, and wonder. The intricacy, detail, complexity, and sheer beauty of that product of nature cannot be captured in words. And when you stop to consider the uncountable number of snowflakes that fall each year (most of them on my driveway it would seem), all of that awe is upped an order of magnitude.

When I see that snowflake, it engages my reverence for the beauty of the undesigned order of the natural world. Look at the symmetry and detail of that snowflake, and then consider that it is the product of undesigned natural processes. I find it an object of awe that natural processes can produce a thing of such detail, complexity and beauty. It is said that only God can make a snowflake. Well for those who understand the science, or who are atheists, we know that you don't need God to do so. But even to an atheist like myself, the spontaneous order of nature can (and should!) generate the same awe, reverence, and wonder that the contemplation of God generates in those who believe. Unfortunately, whenever my wonder at the beauty of nature is engaged, it is with a tinge of frustration.

The frustration I feel is that so many smart and caring people seem unable to see and appreciate the identical processes of undesigned order in the social world. "Social snowflakes" are all around us, yet precious few seem to be able to understand and appreciate them to the degree we do the snowflakes found in nature. And too many people think that these "social snowflakes" require a "Creator."

That snowflake produces in me the same aesthetic-emotional reaction I have when I begin to think about Leonard Read's "I, Pencil," or when I ponder the intricate, detailed, complex, and beautiful processes by which Chilean grapes appear in my grocery store in rural New York in the middle of winter. The pencil and the grapes are "social snowflakes": they look simple, but when we hold them still and examine them with the analogous level of detail as that photo produces in the snowflake, they turn out to be the products of extraordinarily complex and intricate social processes that were designed by no one. My aesthetic reaction of awe and wonder is a response to what Pete Boettke, in a perfect turn of phrase, recently referred to as "the mystery of the mundane." What is more mundane than a snowflake? And yet what, it turns out, is more beautiful and complex than a snowflake? And in the way their mundane surface appearances hide processes of production whose awesome complexity was the product of human action but not human design, and should equally be a source of aesthetic and intellectual contemplation, the pencil and grapes are indeed "social snowflakes."

My fervent wish for the 21st century is that more smart and caring people can begin to see and appreciate "social snowflakes." People who are so willing to accept the existence and beauty (and benevolence!) of undesigned order in the natural world should be more willing to open themselves to the possibility that there are processes of undesigned order at work in the social world too. These people know that no one can make a snowflake, but seem blind to the fact that much of the innocent blood that was spilled in the last century was because too many people thought they could intelligently design the social world. Not repeating those mistakes will require a renewed aesthetic appreciation of, and deep desire to understand, the awesome beauty and complexity of the undesigned order of "social snowflakes."

Comments

[William]

Nice post, but Calvin and Hobbes had one of the best snowflake analogies of ALL TIME!

[William]

Here's that link:

http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=14255#p367000

[Andy Cleary]

Love the post, and your "fervent wish" is one that I have had many times... but damned if I have had any success communicating that awe and wonder to others.

[Matt]

I would like to express my gratitude to you for "re-posting." It's nothing to be ashamed of.

I am in the National Guard, and have recently considered becoming a helicopter pilot. Because I expressed this to my stepfather he bought me a remote control helicopter for Christmas (I opened it early, don't tell). It's a smaller version that is meant to be flown inside. I have been absolutely entranced with the thing ever since I opened it.

It has two rotors and a stabalizer which is enough to keep me fascinated for hours. But now that I have read this post, I cannot stop thinking about the toy's snowflakiness. First off, people had to make a real helicopter before we designed a toy replica. Then, imagining what it took to be able to make the aerodynamics work on such a smaller scale, the ability to crash it into my T.V. and my coffee table without any apparent harm, the little recharging cord that comes out of the remote control- I have to say that mind is seriously being blown.

It's really nice to appreciate the complexity of the little (helicopters) things in life.

[Dave Prychitko]

I remember the original post. Can't believe four years have passed by so quickly.

[K Sralla]

I get the point, but during this time of year when many of us pause to remember our faith, it is sad to me that many scholarly people do not see something more. An uncaused reality that is eternal, transcendent, willful, and somehow contemplating the beauty and majesty of its own spontaneous order sounds quite a bit like a robust definition of God to me. On Christmas, I respectfully request the liberty to quote Paul in Athens around 55 AD.

Luke records:

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he *reasoned* in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very spiritual. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. *For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'*

"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."

Merry Christmas to all