The Museum Whose Walls Moved

There was once, in the First Country, a museum unlike any other.

It was called the Museum of Shells.

No one knew who had built it.

The museum stood beyond the eastern hills, where the land became pale and quiet, and its galleries seemed to continue farther than anyone had ever walked.

Inside were shells.

Thousands upon thousands of them.

Some were long and slender. Some were broad and heavy. Some curled inward tightly, while others opened in great sweeping spirals. Some were smooth as river stones; others carried ridges, folds, ribs and delicate ornament.

There were shells that had been found upon the shores of the First Country.

There were shells that no one had ever seen upon any shore.

And there were shells that, as far as anyone knew, no creature had ever carried.

The mapmakers loved the museum.

They had spent many years drawing its galleries.

One corridor ran towards greater curvature.

Another towards greater thickness.

Another towards changes in the shape of the opening.

There were rooms for coiling, rooms for ornament, rooms for proportion, rooms for combinations of all these things.

The mapmakers had even drawn the empty galleries.

“These,” they said, pointing to the pale spaces on their maps, “are forms that could exist but have not yet appeared.”

The young philosopher found this extraordinary.

“So evolution is a traveller?”

The oldest mapmaker smiled.

“In a manner of speaking.”

He led her to a great map covering an entire wall.

“Here,” he said, “are the forms that have appeared. See how they gather along certain paths.”

The young philosopher looked closely.

The paths were not straight.

They bent.

Some stopped.

Others divided.

Some regions were crowded with shells, while enormous galleries remained empty.

“Why does the traveller go here,” she asked, “and not there?”

The mapmaker pointed to the walls.

“The traveller cannot simply go anywhere. The galleries have a shape.”

And so the young philosopher began to think of evolution as a journey through the museum.

There was abundance everywhere.

But the traveller followed particular roads.

The shape of development mattered.

So did inheritance.

So did the environment.

So did everything that had already happened.

The museum seemed to contain an enormous abundance of possible forms, while history traced only a few paths through it.

For a while, this seemed entirely satisfactory.

Then, one afternoon, the young philosopher noticed something strange.

She was standing in a gallery that had been empty the day before.

A new shell lay upon the floor.

She hurried to find the curator.

“Was this shell already here?”

The curator looked puzzled.

“Of course.”

“In this gallery?”

“Yes.”

“But yesterday this gallery was empty.”

The curator laughed.

“You mean that no one had discovered it.”

The young philosopher was not convinced.

She returned to the gallery.

The shell was certainly there.

But then she noticed something else.

At the far end of the gallery was a wall.

And beyond the wall she could hear water.

She placed her hand against the stone.

The wall trembled.

She called the oldest philosopher.

Together they stood listening.

“There was no water here yesterday,” she said.

“No,” said the old philosopher.

“And there was no shell in this gallery.”

“No.”

“Then what happened?”

The old philosopher did not answer immediately.

Instead, he took her outside.

They walked towards the forest.

There, they found a new stream.

It had appeared after heavy rain in the hills.

The stream had cut through a previously dry part of the forest.

Plants had begun growing along its banks.

Small creatures had followed.

Birds had changed their routes.

Animals had begun drinking there.

And because the animals came, seeds were carried farther into the forest.

The young philosopher looked back towards the museum.

“I think I understand.”

“Do you?”

“The new shell was always possible.”

The old philosopher shook his head.

“Perhaps. But that is not yet enough.”

They continued walking.

A little farther on, they found a plant covered with tiny insects.

The plant had never been eaten by them before.

Now it was.

And because the insects had arrived, another creature had begun feeding there.

And because that creature had arrived, a bird that had never nested in that part of the forest had begun to do so.

Nothing had appeared from nowhere.

Yet the forest was no longer the forest it had been.

The young philosopher stood quietly beneath the trees.

“Then perhaps the question is not whether the form was possible.”

The old philosopher smiled.

“It is a better question.”

She thought for a while.

“Perhaps we should ask whether the world had yet become capable of it.”

This time the old philosopher nodded.

That evening they returned to the Museum of Shells.

The young philosopher went directly to the map.

She noticed that something was wrong.

The mapmaker had drawn a new corridor.

“When did you add this?”

“We didn't.”

She looked more closely.

The corridor had not been drawn.

It had appeared.

The wall between two galleries had been opened.

And through the opening came a narrow passage leading somewhere no map yet showed.

The mapmakers were deeply troubled.

They measured the corridor.

They checked their old dimensions.

They compared it with the rules by which the museum had been constructed.

Nothing seemed to explain it.

At last, the King came to see what had happened.

“Was this corridor always possible?” he asked.

The mapmakers looked at one another.

“Yes,” said one.

“No,” said another.

The oldest philosopher raised a hand.

“There are two questions hidden in that question.”

The King waited.

“A form may be unknown without being new. We may simply fail to have discovered it.”

He pointed towards the shell on the gallery floor.

“But something else can happen.”

He turned towards the new corridor.

“The relations that make possibilities available can themselves change.”

The King looked puzzled.

“Then the museum changes?”

“Yes.”

“Because a shell appeared?”

“Sometimes.”

“Then the shell is not merely something found in the museum.”

“No.”

The old philosopher looked towards the forest beyond the windows.

“It may become part of the architecture.”

The King was silent.

The next morning, the mapmakers tried to redraw the museum.

They discovered that this was harder than expected.

A new corridor had appeared.

Two old corridors had become inaccessible.

Another had widened.

A room that had once been crowded was now almost empty.

And in one corner, where yesterday there had been only a blank wall, someone had drawn a door.

No one knew who had drawn it.

The mapmakers argued about what it meant.

The young philosopher suggested three possibilities.

“Sometimes we discover a possibility that was already there.”

She pointed towards the old galleries.

“Sometimes a possibility becomes actual.”

She pointed towards the shell.

“And sometimes something happens that changes the relations from which further possibilities arise.”

She pointed towards the new door.

The mapmakers stared at it.

“Then what is this museum?” one finally asked.

The young philosopher looked at the immense building.

“I don't think it is one museum anymore.”

And she was right.

For the Museum of Shells had begun to acquire a history.

The old galleries remained.

The old shells remained.

Many possibilities remained exactly as they had been.

But the architecture was no longer timeless.

The museum had become part of the journey.

And the journey had become part of the museum.

The young philosopher returned often after that.

Sometimes she found a new shell.

Sometimes she found a shell that had been there for centuries but had only just been noticed.

Sometimes she found a corridor that had become inaccessible.

And sometimes she found a new passage where no passage had existed before.

She began to wonder whether the empty galleries meant what the mapmakers had always thought they meant.

Perhaps some were simply undiscovered.

But perhaps others were empty because the relations required to enter them did not yet exist.

And perhaps, if those relations disappeared, some galleries might become empty again.

One evening, as the museum closed, she remained behind.

The great halls were silent.

Moonlight entered through the high windows.

She heard a sound somewhere in the distance.

Knock.

Then another.

Knock.

She followed the sound through the galleries until she came to a wall she had never noticed before.

There, in the dim light, stood a mysterious workman.

He carried a hammer.

The young philosopher watched him strike the wall.

Knock.

A crack appeared.

Knock.

The crack widened.

Knock.

Stone fell away.

Behind the wall was a corridor.

The workman picked up his tools and walked away.

The young philosopher called after him.

“What are you building?”

The workman turned.

“I am not building.”

He looked at the broken wall.

“I am making room.”

Then he disappeared into the darkness.

The next morning, the mapmakers discovered that the museum had changed again.

There was a corridor where yesterday there had been none.

And at the end of the corridor was a gallery containing forms that no one had ever seen before.

The mapmakers hurried to draw them.

But the young philosopher did not take up a pen.

She was looking at the walls.

For the first time, she understood that the Museum of Shells was not simply a place through which history travelled.

History itself could alter the building.

A possibility could become actual.

The actual could transform a relation.

The transformed relation could open a new passage.

And beyond that passage there might be possibilities that had not previously been available.

The traveller had become part of the architecture.

The museum had acquired a history.

And somewhere, in the darkness beyond the galleries, the workman was still carrying his hammer.

Knock.

The young philosopher smiled.

Perhaps the world does not merely contain possibilities.

Perhaps, through becoming, it changes the shape of what can become.

And somewhere beyond the wall, another corridor was already beginning.