Unity and Variety in the Spontaneous Social Orders

The sign of a good social scientist is that he can say something fundamental about how people act in one spontaneous social order that will be equally applicable in another such that all one has to do is change a few nouns specific to one spontaneous order to make it applicable to another. Consider this statement by Mises:

The mentality of the promoters, speculators, and entrepreneurs is not different from that of their fellow men. They are merely superior to the masses in mental power and energy. They are the leaders on the way toward material progress. They are the first to understand that there is a discrepency between what is done and what could be done. (Human Action, 336)

Mises is of course talking about action in the catallaxy. But it is equally applicable to the artistic order:

The mentality of the artists, musicians, and literary writers is not different from that of their fellow men. They are merely superior to the masses in mental power and energy. They are the leaders on the way toward artistic change. They are the first to understand that there is a discrepency between what is done and what could be done.

Change the same nouns, and you can use the same statement about the scientific order.

The implication is that there are in fact deep structural similiarities among these different kinds of spontaneous orders. The job of spontaneous orders scholars and researchers is to discover these structural similarities. At the same time, we have to note and understand the differences as well. Prices are a vital element to the catallaxy, but are essentially irrelevant to the artistic orders. Artistic coordination (or scientific coordincation) occurs in a different way than economic coordination. As Butos and McQuade have observed in their papers on the scientific order, reputation is central. But what is it in the artistic orders?