The Emergence of Significance I — Before There Were Things

We are accustomed to thinking of the world as a collection of things.

There are stars, stones, organisms, oceans and people. They have properties, occupy places and enter into relations. We then ask how these things came to be.

But perhaps this reverses the order of explanation.

Before there could be things, there had to be differences.

A universe in which everything was exactly the same in every respect would contain nothing distinguishable. There might still be something there, but there would be no basis for saying that one region, state or event was different from another.

Difference is therefore strangely prior to object.

But this does not mean that difference is itself another kind of thing. A difference exists between states. It is relational from the beginning.

We can see this even in the simplest physical description. A temperature is meaningful because it differs from another temperature. A location is distinguishable because it differs from another location. A particle is identifiable because something distinguishes it from what is not that particle.

What we call a thing may therefore be less fundamental than the distinction through which it becomes identifiable.

This raises a curious possibility.

Perhaps the world did not begin as a collection of things that subsequently entered into relations.

Perhaps what we call things are relatively stable patterns within relations.

A whirlpool is not a thing in quite the same sense as a stone. Its identity depends upon continuing flows of water. Remove the flow and the whirlpool disappears.

A flame is similar. It maintains a recognisable form while matter continually passes through it.

An organism goes further still. Its identity depends upon an extraordinary network of exchanges with what surrounds it. It persists not by remaining materially unchanged, but by maintaining a pattern through continual change.

In each case, identity is not simply given.

It is achieved.

This suggests that the emergence of a thing may be understood not as the appearance of an isolated object, but as the stabilisation of a difference.

Something becomes identifiable when a distinction persists.

And persistence changes the significance of difference. A momentary fluctuation may disappear without consequence. A persistent distinction can begin to structure what happens next.

A boundary is perhaps the clearest example.

The boundary of a cell does not merely separate one piece of matter from another. It establishes an inside and an outside. It allows some exchanges while restricting others. Once such a distinction exists, events on one side can have consequences different from events on the other.

A distinction has become organisational.

Here we begin to approach significance.

The world does not need an observer before differences exist. But something more is required before a difference can matter: the difference must become consequential within some organisation of relations.

That gives us a sequence worth following:

difference → distinction → persistence → organisation → consequence.

The final step is crucial.

A difference that makes no difference to anything remains merely a difference.

A difference incorporated into a system's organisation can become significant.

And perhaps this is where the history of things begins.

Not with objects, but with differences that persist long enough to acquire consequences.

The things we encounter may therefore be the visible aftermath of a much more primitive process:

a difference becoming stable enough to make a difference.

Before there were things, there may have been only relations capable of becoming distinguishable.

And once some differences began to persist, the universe acquired something it had not previously possessed:

a way for one thing to be different from another.