The inertia of meanings leads to the formation of stable meanings—norms—and to the creation of a socio-cultural order consisting of these norms. Meanings in their normative mode are those traditions and “social contracts” that enable society to function as a single whole. Order is constantly undermined by changes in the environment. In the early stages of cultural evolution, when the environment was still largely reduced to nature, order responded mainly to events and phenomena in the natural habitat. Adaptation to the environment occurs faster than the adaptation of the environment to human needs (Livi Bacci 2000, p. 4). Appropriation and consumption precede production. However, as the cultural niche expanded and developed into a cultural environment, order too had to change under the influence of cultural events and phenomena. Over time, cultural events have occurred more frequently and became increasingly unpredictable.
“Economists, typically, do not ask themselves about the structure that humans impose on themselves to order their environment, and therefore reduce uncertainty; nor are they typically concerned with the dynamic nature of the world in which we live, which continues to produce novel problems to be solved. The last point raises a fundamental issue. If we are continually creating a new and novel world, how good is the theory we have developed from past experience to deal with this novel world?” (North 2005, p. 13).
Events and phenomena are a source of uncertainty. From the perspective of order, an event is news if it represents a deviation from the norm: “An occurrence, a meaningful departure from the norm, (that is, ‘news,’ since the fulfillment of a norm is not ‘news’) depends on one’s concept of the norm” (Lotman 1977, p. 234). The socio-cultural order aims to eliminate uncertainty of events by transforming them into facts (patterns of events) and norms (programs of action). Historically, the more meaningful the appropriation process became, the more meaning humans discovered in nature. But while the uncertainty of nature slowly decreased, cultural uncertainty just as slowly increased.
Knowledge or causal models of events and phenomena are not the exclusive prerogative of humans. The presence of elementary reason (i.e. understanding) in animals is demonstrated by their capacity to comprehend the simplest empirical laws of the environment, which enables them to develop programs of action for