Politics, like the free markets of Adam Smith, tends to be guided by an "invisible hand": Countless individual decisions and actions together express a collective logic and even wisdom.

NPR: Let's Talk About The Risks of Undivided Government

Since UPS began shuttling parcels from Seattle department stores with a Model T Ford and a few motorcycles in the early 1900s, it has become an almost invisible hand in the U.S. economy (see chart).

FORBES: Logistics in Brown

Jones and Piccard both said they felt they were guided by an "almost invisible hand" as they circumnavigated the globe.

CNN: Balloonists: '20 days of beautiful moments'

It might be with a gun, an army, a holy book, a law, an invisible free-market hand.

NPR: All Beings Are Interconnected

Adam Smith suggested the invisible hand in an otherwise obscure passage in his Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776.

FORBES: The Death of Macroeconomics: There is No Invisible Hand

In fact, disaster response provides an excellent example of how the invisible hand of the market works to alleviate suffering and bring quick relief to those in need.

FORBES: Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

Now new research finds that this hand position creates an "invisible web" of water that gives swimmers more speed.

MSN: Fastest swimmers make webbed hands out of water