When Does a Difference Make a Difference?: VII. The Difference That Stands For Another

A footprint can indicate an animal.

But a footprint does not necessarily stand for an animal.

The distinction may seem small.

It is not.

A sign is not simply a particularly informative difference.

Something changes when a difference can stand for another.

Consider a red light.

Physically, it is a particular arrangement of electromagnetic radiation.

It can also affect the eye.

But in a traffic system, it does something more.

It stands for stop.

The relation is not simply that red is caused by stopping.

Nor does red physically contain the instruction to stop.

The relation has been organised.

A community has established a practice in which one difference can function in relation to another possibility of action.

The red light becomes a sign.

This is why the distinction between indication and sign matters.

Smoke can indicate fire because fire can cause smoke.

But smoke does not mean fire merely because the relation exists.

A traffic light does not indicate stopping in the same way.

It signifies it.

The difference has entered a system.

And once it has done so, it acquires possibilities that it did not possess as a merely physical difference.

Red can be displayed without there being any fire.

A word can refer to something that is absent.

A flag can stand for a country.

A gesture can stand for an instruction.

A diagram can stand for a process.

The sign is no longer tied to the physical presence of what it signifies.

This is a remarkable new freedom.

Indication is constrained by the relation that makes it informative.

A footprint can indicate an animal because the animal left the footprint.

But a sign can be detached from such a causal relation.

The sign can be repeated.

Moved.

Copied.

Modified.

Stored.

Combined with other signs.

It can travel.

A word spoken yesterday can mean something today.

A symbol can survive the disappearance of the person who first used it.

A diagram can describe something that has never existed.

The semiotic relation therefore opens a new kind of possibility.

A difference can now participate in the organisation of something absent, distant, future or imaginary.

But this does not mean that signs float free of the world.

They require material differences.

Ink on paper.

Sound in air.

Light on a screen.

A gesture made by a body.

The sign depends upon a physical event.

What changes is not the material difference itself.

It is the relation in which that difference participates.

The same sound can be noise in one context and a word in another.

The same colour can be pigment in one context and a signal in another.

The same movement can be accidental in one context and a gesture in another.

The physical difference remains.

Its semiotic function changes.

This is why meaning cannot simply be located in the sign itself.

The sign becomes meaningful within an organised system of relations.

And those relations are historical.

A sign works because there is a practice in which it can work.

A traffic light is meaningful because there is a system of traffic regulation.

A word is meaningful because there is a language.

A mathematical symbol is meaningful because there is a mathematical practice.

The sign therefore introduces something new into our story.

Differences can now be socially organised as possibilities for construal.

The world was already full of differences.

Living systems had become sensitive to some of them.

Some differences could indicate others.

Now differences can be organised so that one can stand for another.

And once this happens, the world acquires a new dimension.

A thing can be present without being physically present.

An event can be represented without occurring.

A possibility can be discussed before it is actual.

An absence can become available.

This is not yet the whole story of meaning.

For signs can be used without necessarily exhausting what they make possible.

A word can acquire different meanings in different contexts.

A gesture can be ambiguous.

A symbol can be reinterpreted.

Signs can enter into relations with other signs and thereby alter what each can do.

The semiotic world is therefore not merely a warehouse of representations.

It is a dynamic field of possibilities.

And language will make that field extraordinarily productive.

For when signs can be combined systematically, something remarkable becomes possible.

We can no longer merely stand for things.

We can construe relations among them.

We can distinguish.

Classify.

Compare.

Question.

Negate.

Imagine.

The sign has opened a door.

Language will turn it into a landscape.

But before we follow it there, we should pause over what has happened.

A difference first became consequential.

Then it became part of a constraint.

For living systems, some differences became matters of continuation.

Some systems became sensitive to differences.

Some differences began to indicate.

And now some differences can stand for others.

At each stage, nothing magical has been added to the world.

A new relation has become possible.

And perhaps that is the deepest continuity in the whole story.

Difference does not become meaning by becoming more complicated.

It becomes meaning when it enters into a new kind of relation.

The next question is what that new kind of relation makes possible.

Why does meaning make a difference?

When Does a Difference Make a Difference?: VI. When Difference Indicates

A system can be sensitive to a difference.

But sometimes the difference does more than affect it.

It tells us something.

Or, more carefully, it can indicate something.

A dark cloud can indicate rain.

A footprint can indicate an animal's passage.

A chemical gradient can indicate the direction of a concentration difference.

A fever can indicate a change in the body's condition.

In each case, one difference is related to another.

The important word is related.

The cloud does not mean rain.

The footprint does not mean animal.

The fever does not mean infection.

They can indicate these things because there is some relation between what is present and what is not immediately present.

This is already more than simple sensitivity.

A system responds to a difference.

But an indication allows a difference to function as information about another difference or state of affairs.

Something present makes something else available to inference, prediction or action.

The footprint is particularly instructive.

The footprint is here.

The animal may not be.

Yet the footprint can make the animal's presence relevant.

It is a trace left by an earlier event, and its relation to that event allows what is absent to become accessible.

Nothing needs to have intended this.

The animal did not necessarily leave the footprint in order to tell anyone anything.

The footprint can indicate without communicating.

This is a crucial distinction.

Information does not require intention.

Nor does indication require meaning.

A thermometer can indicate temperature without knowing anything about temperature.

A tree ring can indicate something about past conditions without anyone having designed it to do so.

A footprint can indicate an animal without being a message from the animal.

Indication can therefore exist before signs.

And perhaps this gives us a more precise way to think about the transition from sensitivity.

A sensitive system can respond differently to different conditions.

An indicative relation goes further.

The difference encountered is correlated with something else in a way that can guide what happens next.

The chemical gradient does not merely affect the bacterium.

It can guide movement towards a concentration of nutrients.

The smoke does not merely alter visibility.

It can provide information about fire.

The difference has become informative.

But informative is not yet meaningful.

This distinction matters because it is tempting to treat information as the beginning of semantics.

If the footprint carries information about the animal, we might say that it "represents" the animal.

But that word can conceal the very transition we are trying to understand.

The footprint does not have to represent anything.

It can simply be a physical consequence of the animal's presence.

The relation between them may be entirely causal.

What matters is that the relation can be exploited.

A system capable of responding to the footprint can behave differently because the footprint makes another state of affairs available.

The indication therefore belongs to a relation between differences.

One difference is present.

Another is absent or not directly accessible.

The relation between them allows the first to provide access to the second.

This gives indication a peculiar temporal structure.

Sometimes the indication points backwards.

A footprint indicates something that happened.

Sometimes it points forwards.

A darkening sky can indicate what is likely to happen.

Sometimes it points sideways.

A smell can indicate something occurring nearby.

In every case, the present difference opens a route to something beyond itself.

But the route does not have to be symbolic.

A causal relation can be enough.

This is why we should resist the temptation to call every informative difference a sign.

The world is full of information.

But the world is not thereby full of meanings.

A difference can carry information without standing for anything.

A trace can guide behaviour without becoming a symbol.

A correlation can be exploited without being interpreted.

We are therefore approaching another threshold.

At some point in evolution, culture or practice, differences cease merely to indicate.

They begin to be used as signs.

And when that happens, the relation changes.

The sign is no longer simply a trace of what happened.

It can be produced, selected, recognised and shared as something that stands for something else.

The difference is no longer merely informative.

It has entered a semiotic system.

So the question becomes sharper still.

When does a difference that indicates become a difference that stands for another?

When Does a Difference Make a Difference?: V. Being Sensitive to Difference

A difference can matter without being noticed.

Water can matter to a plant without the plant representing water.

Light can matter to an organism without the organism having a concept of light.

But living systems can do something more.

They can become sensitive to differences.

Sensitivity is not simply being affected.

Everything is affected by something.

A stone is warmed by the sun.

A leaf is moved by the wind.

A molecule responds to a change in its surroundings.

But sensitivity implies a particular kind of organisation.

A system responds differently because the difference is different.

The distinction is subtle.

A system can be changed by its environment without its subsequent activity depending systematically upon the character of the change.

Sensitivity begins when differences in the environment can produce differential responses.

A plant grows differently in different conditions of light.

A bacterium moves differently according to a chemical gradient.

An animal changes its behaviour according to changes in its surroundings.

The organism is not merely undergoing change.

Its organisation allows differences to become differences in what it does.

This gives sensitivity a history.

It does not appear from nowhere.

The organism already possesses capacities and internal organisation that make certain environmental differences consequential.

Sensitivity develops within those relations.

And this means that sensitivity is selective.

An organism cannot be equally sensitive to everything.

It is sensitive to some differences and relatively insensitive to others.

The world may contain an enormous number of physical differences.

Only some enter into the organism's organisation as differences to which it can respond.

This is another way of saying that an organism inhabits a particular world.

Not the whole physical world in its entirety, but a world structured by the differences that its organisation can make consequential.

A bird can detect differences in movement that matter for flight.

A plant can respond to differences in light.

A bacterium can respond to differences in chemical concentration.

Their worlds overlap.

But they are not identical.

The difference is not necessarily in what physically exists.

It is in what can enter into their organisation.

This is where perception begins to come into view.

But we should resist moving too quickly.

Sensitivity is not yet perception in the richer sense.

A system may be sensitive to a difference without constructing an internal representation of what that difference is.

The important point is more elementary.

The organism's activity is differentially organised by differences in its environment.

That is already a significant development in our story.

We began with differences that simply occur.

Then we saw that some differences alter what can happen.

Some become constraints.

With life, some differences can matter to the continuation of an organised system.

Now we have a system whose own organisation allows differences to produce different responses.

The relation has become reciprocal in a new sense.

The environment affects the organism.

But the organism's organisation determines which environmental differences can affect it in particular ways.

This is why sensitivity cannot be located entirely inside either side of the relation.

The environment supplies differences.

The organism supplies a capacity for differential response.

Sensitivity emerges from their encounter.

And once sensitivity exists, the organism's world becomes richer.

A difference in light can be distinguished from a difference in temperature.

A chemical gradient can be distinguished from a mechanical disturbance.

Not necessarily as concepts.

Not necessarily as representations.

But as differences that have different consequences for the organism's activity.

The world is beginning to become differentiated through the organism's responses.

This is an important threshold.

For once differences can be differentially registered in a system, the organism can begin to respond not merely to what happens, but to which difference has happened.

And that opens the possibility of anticipation.

A difference can become relevant before the consequences it predicts have fully arrived.

A gradient can be followed.

A signal can trigger a response.

A trace can guide behaviour.

The organism can become responsive to something that stands in a relation to something else.

Now we are approaching indication.

But indication is not yet meaning.

A difference can carry information about another state of affairs without becoming a sign.

The crucial question is therefore no longer simply whether an organism can be sensitive to difference.

It is:

When can one difference indicate another?

That is our next threshold.

When Does a Difference Make a Difference?: IV. The Difference That Matters

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?

When Does a Difference Make a Difference?: III. When Difference Becomes Constraint

A difference becomes consequential when it changes what can happen next.

One of the most fundamental ways it does this is through constraint.

We usually think of constraint as something negative.

A constraint prevents.

It restricts.

It closes possibilities.

And sometimes it does exactly that.

A wall prevents passage.

A lack of water prevents growth.

A physical law prevents certain things from happening.

But constraint does something more interesting than merely saying no.

It gives processes a shape.

Imagine a river flowing across a perfectly flat and limitless surface.

It could go anywhere.

But because the world is not flat and limitless, the river follows channels, slopes and contours.

The constraints do not simply prevent movement.

They organise it.

The river becomes a river partly because it cannot flow in every possible direction at once.

This is the strange productivity of constraint.

By making some developments impossible, a constraint can make others possible.

A musical instrument works because its strings, body and materials constrain the sounds it can produce.

A language works because not every sound can mean anything in any way.

An organism exists because its processes are constrained into a particular organisation.

Without constraint, there might be change.

But there would be no particular form of becoming.

This allows us to see constraint in a different way.

A constraint is a difference that has entered into the conditions of a process.

The wall differs from open space.

The riverbed differs from the surrounding ground.

The cell membrane differs from the fluid around it.

And because of these differences, what can happen is altered.

The difference has become consequential because it has changed the topology of possibility.

Some pathways are closed.

Others become channels.

Some states can no longer be reached.

Others become more likely.

The constraint therefore does not stand outside the process as an external prohibition.

It becomes part of the process's organisation.

This is particularly clear in living systems.

A plant cannot grow in any direction without limit.

Its structure, environment and history constrain its development.

But those constraints do not merely restrict the plant.

They are part of what makes this particular form of growth possible.

The same is true of behaviour.

An animal's body constrains what it can do.

It cannot move like every other animal.

But those limitations are inseparable from its particular capacities.

A bird's inability to breathe underwater is a constraint.

Its wings are also constraints.

They limit some possibilities while opening an extraordinary range of others.

This is why we should resist the simple opposition between freedom and constraint.

Freedom is often imagined as the absence of limitation.

But a world without differences would offer no pathways at all.

If everything were equally possible, nothing would be organised.

A possibility becomes meaningful only against alternatives that are not equally available.

A pathway exists because there are places it does not go.

A form exists because there are ways in which it is not formed.

A process has direction because not every direction is equally open.

Constraint gives possibility its shape.

And this brings us back to difference.

A constraint is not necessarily a thing.

It can be a relation.

The distance between two objects can constrain whether they interact.

The timing of two events can constrain whether they coincide.

The absence of a necessary resource can constrain what an organism can do.

The difference lies not simply in an object but in the organisation of a situation.

Perhaps this is why constraint is so important to the question of becoming.

Nothing becomes just because possibilities exist.

Something becomes because some possibilities are available, some are unavailable, and some are more likely than others.

The world is not an empty space in which anything might happen.

It is a structured field of differences.

Those differences constrain.

The constraints organise.

And through that organisation, particular histories become possible.

This may be the first great paradox of difference.

A difference can make a difference by limiting what happens.

But in doing so, it can also create the conditions under which something new can emerge.

The river finds a channel.

The organism acquires a form.

The instrument produces a sound.

The concept follows a furrow.

Constraint does not simply stand at the edge of possibility.

It helps create its landscape.

And yet this is still not mattering.

The river does not care about its banks.

The plant does not need to experience its structural constraints.

The difference has become consequential without becoming significant.

That distinction now becomes crucial.

For some differences do not merely constrain what happens.

They begin to matter.

And that raises our next question.

When does a consequential difference become a difference that matters?

When Does a Difference Make a Difference?: II. Difference for What?

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?

When Does a Difference Make a Difference?: I. Nothing Happens Without Difference

Nothing happens without difference.

At first, this seems obvious.

For something to change, it must become different.

For something to move, its position must change.

For something to grow, something must be added, transformed or rearranged.

For something to happen, the world must not remain exactly as it was.

But the more closely we look, the stranger the idea becomes.

The world is full of differences.

Temperatures differ.

Surfaces differ.

Sounds differ.

Organisms differ.

One moment differs from another.

Yet most differences appear to make no difference at all.

A grain of sand shifts on a distant beach.

A molecule changes direction.

A star brightens beyond the reach of any observer.

The difference is real.

But to what does it matter?

This question introduces an important distinction.

A difference can exist without making a difference.

The temperature may change by one thousandth of a degree without altering anything relevant to a particular system.

A sound may occur without being heard.

A colour may change without being seen.

A chemical reaction may take place without affecting anything beyond itself.

So perhaps the interesting question is not whether differences exist.

It is:

When does a difference become consequential?

Something must encounter it.

Or perhaps something must be organised in such a way that the difference can alter what happens next.

A difference in temperature becomes consequential to a thermostat.

A difference in light becomes consequential to a plant.

A difference in movement becomes consequential to a prey animal.

The same physical difference can therefore be irrelevant in one relation and decisive in another.

The difference alone is not enough.

But neither is the receiving system enough.

Something happens between them.

We have encountered this structure before.

A branch does not simply contain the affordance of perching.

It affords perching in relation to a particular kind of organism.

Likewise, a physical difference does not simply carry significance within itself.

It becomes consequential within a relation.

This does not mean that the difference is invented by the organism.

The temperature really changes.

The light really varies.

The predator really moves.

But whether those differences alter what happens depends upon the organisation of whatever encounters them.

This gives us a useful way of avoiding two familiar mistakes.

The first is to imagine that the world is already divided into significant and insignificant differences.

The second is to imagine that significance is simply projected onto an otherwise indifferent world.

Perhaps neither is quite right.

The world contains differences.

Organised systems make some differences consequential.

And once a difference becomes consequential, something new has happened.

The future is no longer exactly what it would have been without it.

A different pathway has opened.

Or closed.

A process has changed direction.

A response has become possible.

A new constraint has appeared.

This may be the most elementary form of history.

For history begins wherever a difference changes what can happen next.

And that suggests a curious possibility.

Perhaps a difference does not make a difference merely because it is noticed.

Perhaps noticing is itself one particular way in which a difference can become consequential.

Long before anything notices anything, differences can alter processes.

Long before anything matters, differences can constrain.

Long before anything means, differences can change what is possible.

We are therefore not beginning with meaning.

Nor even with mattering.

We are beginning further back.

With a world in which differences occur.

And with the strange fact that some of them change everything.

The question is why.

What is it that allows one difference to disappear into the world without consequence, while another becomes the beginning of a new process?

What must be present for a difference to make a difference?

That is the puzzle we will follow.

And perhaps the answer will turn out to be more complicated than the phrase suggests.

For once a difference has made a difference, the world itself is no longer the same.

And that altered world may now make further differences possible.

Perhaps this is how becoming begins.

Not with things.

But with differences that change what can happen next.