An ownership society evolves: who says individualized accounts are a better way to solve social problems? The laws of nature.

The field of study is fashionably referred to as "complexity science," or "chaos theory." Its academic practitioners use $50 words like "autocatalysis," "self-organization," or "spontaneous order" to describe what they are observing. But Adam Smith noted the same phenomena, and coined his own, more famous, description: "the invisible hand."

Using computers designed to mimic real-life situations, mathematicians and theorists at the Santa Fe Institute and computer science departments around the country are trying to explain how large groups of individuals seeking only their own self-interest regularly arrange themselves into complex organizations that have ...