A wall constrains movement.
A riverbank constrains a river.
A change in temperature can alter the state of matter.
These differences make a difference.
But they do not necessarily matter.
The distinction is easy to overlook.
We use matter to mean many things.
Something can matter because it has consequences.
Something can matter because it is valuable.
Something can matter because it is important to someone.
These are not the same.
A rock can alter the course of a stream without the rock mattering to the stream.
A constraint can shape a process without becoming significant to anything within that process.
So perhaps mattering requires something more than consequence.
It requires a system for which the difference can make a difference to its own continuation.
This is where life changes the picture.
A plant deprived of water does not merely undergo a physical alteration.
Its capacity to continue growing is affected.
Water is not merely one variable among others.
For the plant, differences in water availability enter into the conditions of its continued existence.
Light, temperature, nutrients and physical damage can similarly become consequential in ways that are tied to the organism's ongoing organisation.
The organism is not simply changed by the environment.
Its own organisation makes some changes more consequential than others.
This is a new kind of relation.
A difference can now affect whether the system can continue as the kind of system it is.
Perhaps that is what we mean by saying that something matters.
It matters when a difference becomes significant for the maintenance or development of an organised form of life.
This does not require thought.
It does not require language.
It does not even require awareness.
A plant does not have to think that water is important for water to matter to the plant.
Mattering can therefore precede meaning.
Indeed, it may precede perception.
The plant's relation to water does not begin when the plant recognises water.
The relation is already built into the organisation of its life.
This helps us distinguish mattering from constraint.
A constraint changes what can happen.
Mattering concerns what makes a difference to the continuation of an organised system.
The two can overlap.
A shortage of water constrains a plant's growth.
But it matters because the plant's organisation makes that constraint consequential to its continuing life.
The same physical difference can therefore be merely constraining in one relation and mattering in another.
A stone constrains the growth of a root.
But whether the stone itself matters to the plant depends upon how that encounter enters into the plant's ongoing organisation.
This gives us a richer picture of the relation between organism and environment.
The environment does not come neatly divided into things that matter and things that do not.
The organism's organisation establishes a field of differential consequence.
Some differences are absorbed without significant alteration.
Some alter the conditions of growth.
Some threaten continuation.
Some enable it.
The organism therefore lives in a world of unequal consequences.
And this inequality is not simply a matter of the observer's judgement.
It belongs to the organisation of the living system itself.
A difference matters because the organism is the kind of system for which that difference can alter its trajectory.
This also explains why mattering is not simply a more intense form of consequence.
A falling stone has consequences.
A plant's loss of water has consequences.
But the latter belongs to an organisation in which continuation itself is at stake.
There is something for which the difference matters.
The emergence of life therefore introduces a new possibility into our story.
The world does not merely constrain processes.
It can become significant within a process whose continuation depends upon how it responds to what happens.
This is still not meaning.
The water does not signify survival.
The light does not communicate growth.
The organism need not interpret either.
Something much more elementary is happening.
The organism's organisation establishes a difference between conditions under which its activity can continue and conditions under which it cannot.
The world has become differentiated from the point of view of life.
And perhaps this is the beginning of value.
Not value as judgement.
Not value as preference.
But value as the difference between what supports and what threatens the continuation of an organised form of life.
Once such differences exist, however, another possibility emerges.
The organism may become organised not merely to be affected by differences, but to discriminate among them.
It may become sensitive to some differences before they become overwhelming.
It may alter its behaviour in anticipation of what they make possible.
And now we are approaching a new threshold.
For the difference that matters may eventually become a difference that the organism can detect as a difference.
That is where we must go next.
What does it mean to be sensitive to a difference?
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