Persona Classification Layer
Compare Personas
Pick two or more historical figures to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension evidence, and shared school influences side by side.
John Locke
The mind as tabula rasa, government by consent, religious toleration — the scaffolding of the modern liberal order
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where personas disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid (32 attributes) is shown.
| Attribute | John Locke |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | N/A |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each persona's writings reveal about their stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
John Locke
Conventional late seventeenth-century Newtonian: substantival, infinite, continuous, linear, uni-directional. Non-deterministic because the will is free in the working sense Locke defends.
Space
John Locke
Substantival in the Newtonian sense, infinite, flat, three-dimensional, local. Locke is a corpuscularian inheritor of Boyle and Newton.
Matter
John Locke
Substantival, conserved, three-dimensional, local. The primary-secondary qualities distinction structures Locke's account of how perception relates to the corpuscular reality of bodies.
Observer
John Locke
Single embodied person — the mind in the Essay is treated as the conscious thought-stream of an individual person, with personal identity constituted by memory (the famous prince-and-cobbler thought experiment, Essay II.27). Active agency through deliberation and choice. Personal metaphysical agency: a latitudinarian Christian God.
Energy
John Locke
Conventional Newtonian: finite, substantival, conserved, irreversible.
Information
John Locke
Conserved at both scales. The Reasonableness of Christianity affirms a future state and resurrection.
Internal Tensions
Where each persona's working synthesis strains against itself.
Locke's political theory of consent, equality, and natural rights coexisted in his own life with substantial investment in the Royal African Company and contribution to the constitution of the Carolinas, which provided for slavery. The Locke scholarship of recent decades has worked the tension between the universalist text and the contradictory practice without producing consensus.