ABSTRACT
Rules, practices, and institutions formed from speech acts form a way of life that lives on and is passed on. Yet, as with all systems, biological or otherwise, there arise variations—biologists call them mutations. As biological life encounters mutations that have evolved over time to the advantage of that species and those that do not, so too do agents, mutations, and variations of ideas. That ideas, expressed linguistically at one moment in time grow, change, adapt, multiply, and replicate themselves across time and place, can be posited. That they can, like biological mutations, offer advantageous mutations and harmful mutations can also be suggested. Robert Wright wrote of the “selective transmission of nongenetic information…through cultural evolution.” With this in mind, it can be said that ideas enter social relations and do so in an evolutionary way, developing from one to the next, advancing and retreating in adherence to the coherence of the legitimacy and prominence of the relating agents, expressed through linguistic exchange.
