Stephen Smoliar has a post today that refers to Hayek’s The Sensory Order. I’m particularly pleased to hear that Smoliar’s sometime-colleague Brian Arthur holds Hayek in high regard. Coming from Arthur, that is high praise indeed. Smoliar also writes:

Edelman himself does not appear to have acknowledged Hayek’s work, but this is entirely understandable.

I’m pleased to report that Edelman does acknowledge Hayek in his “Through a computer darkly: Group selection and higher brain function”. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 20-49. (1882) and in Neural Darwinism: The theory of neuronal group selection. New York: Basic Books. (1987).

Within the empirical sciences, Hayek’s greatest champion is Joaquín Fuster who writes that:

It is truly astonishing that its author, in the middle of the ignorance that existed in the first half of the XX century about the anatomical and physiological organization of the cortex, would instinctively coincide with the evidence of the second half of the century.

Smoliar continues:

The book [TSO] was languishing in obscurity almost from the moment of its publication in the early Fifties, but those of us with more respect for history might now prefer it to much of the far more shallow writing that now seems to fill too many bookshelves.

Hear! Hear! I’m pleased to have discovered Smoliar’s eclectic and civilized blog.