A difference makes a difference.
But for what?
The question changes everything.
A change in temperature makes a difference to ice.
At a certain point, the ice melts.
The same change may make little difference to a nearby stone.
A change in light makes a difference to a plant.
The plant alters its growth.
The same change may make no immediate difference to the soil beneath it.
So a difference is never simply consequential.
It is consequential for something.
This sounds like a small qualification.
But the word for is dangerous.
It can suggest purpose.
It can suggest experience.
It can suggest that something has recognised the difference and decided that it matters.
None of this is necessary.
The ice does not care about temperature.
The plant need not understand light.
The stone does not fail to notice anything.
A difference can be consequential for a system simply because the system is organised in such a way that the difference alters what happens within it.
The question is therefore not:
Who notices the difference?
It is:
What can be changed by it?
A difference in temperature can alter the state of water.
A difference in pressure can alter the movement of air.
A difference in chemical concentration can alter a reaction.
A difference in light can alter the growth of a plant.
In each case, the difference enters into a relation with an organised process.
And the process develops differently because of it.
Perhaps this is the first meaning of for.
Not purpose.
Not awareness.
Simply consequence.
A difference is for a system when it can participate in changing what that system becomes or does.
But this immediately raises another question.
Where does the system end?
If a change in temperature affects a plant, and the plant alters the surrounding soil, and the soil affects another organism, the difference has travelled.
It has become consequential across a network of relations.
Was the temperature difference for the plant?
For the soil?
For the ecosystem?
For all of them?
Perhaps the question has no single answer.
A difference can make different differences in different relations.
The same rainfall may nourish one plant, damage another and alter the behaviour of an animal.
There is no universal significance contained within the rain.
There are only consequences unfolding through different systems.
This suggests that for does not identify a hidden property inside the difference.
It identifies a relation.
The difference is not significant by itself.
Nor is the system simply inventing its significance.
The significance lies in what happens when the difference enters into the organisation of the system.
This is familiar territory, but perhaps we can now see it more clearly.
A branch affords perching for a bird.
A temperature difference affects melting for ice.
A chemical gradient guides movement for a bacterium.
The for names the relation within which something becomes consequential.
But now another question begins to appear.
How, exactly, does a difference alter what happens next?
One answer is that it changes the conditions under which a process can continue.
The rise in temperature does not simply add something to the ice.
It changes what states of the ice are possible.
The presence of a wall changes where a moving body can go.
A lack of water changes what a plant can do.
A difference can therefore become consequential by altering the field of possibility itself.
It can open one pathway.
It can close another.
It can redirect a process.
It can make one development easier and another impossible.
This is an important thought.
For we often imagine constraint as something opposed to difference.
But perhaps a constraint is itself a way in which a difference makes a difference.
The wall differs from empty space.
The dry soil differs from wet soil.
The colder environment differs from the warmer one.
And because of those differences, not everything can happen in the same way.
A difference has become a condition.
A condition has become a constraint.
And the constraint changes what is possible next.
Perhaps this is one of the most fundamental ways in which differences become consequential.
Not because anything notices them.
Not because they matter.
Not because they mean anything.
But because they alter the shape of what can happen.
The question we have been asking therefore changes once again.
A difference is consequential for a system when it enters into the conditions of that system's becoming.
But what happens when the difference does not merely alter a process?
What happens when it begins to limit, channel or organise the possibilities available to it?
That is where we must go next.
When does a difference become a constraint?
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