After the workman disappeared into the darkness, the young philosopher returned to the Museum of Shells many times.
The museum continued to change.
A corridor appeared where there had once been a wall.
A gallery that had been crowded with shells became empty.
Some passages seemed to lengthen.
Others became narrow.
The mapmakers could no longer keep up.
But after a while, the young philosopher noticed something that troubled her even more than the changing walls.
The museum had doors.
Of course, it had always had doors.
But she had never thought much about them.
A door stood at the end of a corridor.
If it was open, there was a room beyond it.
If it was closed, there was not.
This seemed simple enough.
Until one morning she found a door standing open.
Beyond it was a gallery containing shells she had never seen before.
She stepped towards it.
Then she stopped.
On the other side of the gallery stood a small creature.
It could see the room.
It could see the doorway.
It could see the young philosopher walking through it.
But it could not reach the door.
The passage was too high.
For the creature, the gallery might as well have been behind a wall.
The young philosopher looked back at the open doorway.
The room was there.
The passage was there.
Nothing prevented the doorway from being crossed.
And yet the creature could not cross it.
She found the oldest philosopher.
“There is something strange about the doors.”
“There usually is.”
“The room beyond this one can be entered.”
“Yes.”
“But not by everyone.”
“No.”
“Then being possible is not the same as being available.”
The old philosopher smiled.
“You have noticed the difference.”
They continued through the museum.
In one gallery, a narrow opening led to a high chamber.
The young philosopher could climb to it.
An old man could not.
In another, a passage was wide enough for a person but too narrow for one of the larger animals that wandered through the museum.
Elsewhere, a door was covered by a curtain so thick that someone who did not know it was there might walk past without ever noticing it.
The mapmakers had drawn every one of these passages.
But their maps did not say who could reach them.
The young philosopher began to wonder whether a map of possibilities was enough.
One afternoon, she returned to the forest.
There she found a bird sitting on a branch.
The branch was strong enough to hold it.
The bird hopped along it, settled itself beneath the leaves and began to sing.
A child watching nearby climbed onto the same branch.
The branch did not change.
But what it offered the child was different.
The bird found a place to rest.
The child found a way to climb.
An insect found shelter beneath the bark.
The young philosopher picked up a stone and placed it against the trunk.
The stone simply remained where she had put it.
She smiled.
“The tree has not changed,” she said.
“No,” said the old philosopher.
“But what it makes available has.”
“Exactly.”
She watched the bird.
“Then the branch does not carry some hidden property called ‘perching’.”
“No.”
“And the bird does not carry ‘perching’ inside itself.”
“No.”
“Something happens between them.”
The old philosopher nodded.
“And that something matters.”
The young philosopher began to see that the museum was full of such encounters.
A staircase might be possible to climb.
But only for someone who could climb it.
A door might be possible to open.
But only for someone who could reach the handle.
A bridge might make a journey possible.
But only for someone who could reach the bridge.
And even then, something else might matter.
The traveller might be able to cross the bridge but have no reason to do so.
Another might want to cross desperately but lack the strength.
A third might possess both the ability and the desire, and simply walk across.
The young philosopher realised that readiness had more than one face.
Ability mattered.
So did inclination.
A participant could be capable of an action without being disposed towards it.
It could be disposed towards an action without being capable of it.
The old philosopher took her to a quiet room at the edge of the museum.
There was a table.
On the table lay three stones.
He pointed to the first.
“What can happen here?”
The young philosopher considered.
“The stone can be moved.”
“By whom?”
She looked at the stone again.
“Not by the stone.”
He pointed to the second.
“And this?”
“It could be carried.”
“By whom?”
She began to understand.
He pointed to the third.
“And this?”
She smiled.
“It depends.”
The old philosopher nodded.
“Much of the world does.”
That evening, the young philosopher returned to the museum.
She began to walk its galleries differently.
She no longer asked only what forms could exist.
She asked which rooms could be reached.
She no longer looked only at the corridors.
She looked at the travellers.
And she noticed that the museum changed according to who entered it.
A child saw places that the mapmakers ignored.
A bird found openings invisible to a person.
A creature that could burrow discovered passages that were not passages at all to those who remained above ground.
The same museum seemed to contain different countries.
Not because the walls were different.
Because the relations between the walls and their visitors were different.
Then something remarkable happened.
A new visitor arrived.
No one knew where he had come from.
He carried a small tool.
At the centre of the museum stood a door that had always been too heavy for anyone to move.
The visitor examined it.
Then he placed the tool beneath the door.
Slowly, he lifted it.
A gap appeared.
Several creatures entered.
Some could pass through.
Others could not.
The door had not merely been opened.
A new possibility had become available to some of the inhabitants of the museum.
The young philosopher watched them disappear into the chamber beyond.
“What is happening?” she asked.
The old philosopher looked at the doorway.
“The field is changing.”
“And the visitors?”
“They are changing with it.”
She thought about this.
A participant could change.
The environment could change.
The relation between them could change.
And each change could alter what was available.
The museum was no longer simply a collection of possible rooms.
It was becoming a place of possible encounters.
The distinction seemed small when she first discovered it.
Now it seemed enormous.
A possibility was something the structure of the museum left open.
Availability was something more particular.
It concerned what could actually be reached from here, by this visitor, under these conditions.
And potential belonged to the visitor.
What could this creature do?
What was it able to do?
What was it disposed to do?
What was it ready to take up?
The young philosopher began to write these questions into the margins of the map.
The mapmakers objected.
“A map should show the museum.”
“It does.”
“Then why write about the visitors?”
“Because the same room is not the same possibility for everyone.”
They frowned.
She continued.
“A door is not an invitation simply because it is open.”
The oldest mapmaker looked at her for a long time.
Then he quietly erased a line from his map.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making room for the truth.”
The young philosopher smiled.
After that, the maps changed.
They began to show not only galleries but paths between galleries.
Not only paths but doors.
Not only doors but the creatures capable of passing through them.
And beside some doors they wrote:
AVAILABLE TO SOME.
Beside others:
AVAILABLE ONLY UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS.
And beside a few:
POSSIBLE, BUT NOT YET REACHABLE.
The Museum of Shells was becoming a strange place.
Its possibilities were no longer simply things waiting in rooms.
They depended upon where one stood.
They depended upon what one could do.
They depended upon what one was prepared to do.
And they depended upon the relations between all these things.
One evening, the young philosopher stood before a great window overlooking the forest.
A bird flew from a branch.
A child climbed the tree.
An insect disappeared beneath the bark.
Far below, a traveller crossed the new bridge.
The same world had offered each of them something different.
She thought of the museum.
Perhaps the world did not simply contain possibilities.
Perhaps possibilities became meaningful only as they became available to participants.
And perhaps, when possibility met a participant who was able and disposed to take it up, something more appeared.
An affordance.
Not a property hidden in the world.
Not a capacity carried entirely by the participant.
Something that existed in the relation between them.
The young philosopher returned to the museum one last time that day.
She found a door standing open.
Yesterday it had led nowhere.
Today there was a passage beyond it.
She placed her hand upon the frame.
For a moment she did not enter.
She simply stood there.
The possibility was present.
The passage was available.
And she was ready.
Then she stepped through.
Behind her, somewhere deep in the museum, there came the familiar sound.
Knock.
The workman was at it again.
The young philosopher laughed softly.
For now she understood what he was making.
Not rooms.
Not corridors.
Not even possibilities.
He was making new ways for possibilities to become available.
And as she walked into the darkness beyond the door, she wondered what the museum would be like for the next visitor.
Because the next visitor would not enter the same museum.
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