Conjecture

Part I identifies markets and ant colonies as the same kind of system, and the identifying feature is overlapping partial views. Hayek: the whole acts as one market not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. Part I connects this directly back to the colony, where overlapping fields of vision is the hallmark of interdependence that lets the actions of individuals, ants or people, create ripples that become the behaviour of the system. The conclusion is stated rather than implied: markets are a product of emergence just as ant colonies are, which is why the two have so many properties in common. Interdependence of partial views is what produces a system able to transmit knowledge and shape behaviour on a different order of magnitude from its parts.

Coordination architecture