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Persona #63

Mary Wollstonecraft

1759–1797
English Enlightenment philosopher, writer, founding feminist theorist

Reason as the human birthright; if it belongs to men it belongs to women — the rights of woman are the rights of man

Attribute Fingerprint

Rows where personas disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid (32 attributes) is shown.

Attribute Mary Wollstonecraft
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 implicit
Space · Dimensionality Three
Space · Locality implicit
Matter · Extent Finite
Matter · Ontological Status Substantival
Matter · Conservation Conserved
Matter · Dimensionality Three
Matter · Locality implicit
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 implicit

Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence

What each persona's writings reveal about their stance on each of the six dimensions.

Time

Mary Wollstonecraft

Linear, uni-directional, non-deterministic. Wollstonecraft's political thought has a strong developmental dimension — institutions can be reformed, human capacities can be expanded, the present arrangement is not the only possible one.

Space

Mary Wollstonecraft

Conventional Newtonian.

Matter

Mary Wollstonecraft

Conventional Newtonian.

Observer

Mary Wollstonecraft

Single embodied person, plural among others, actively engaged in self-cultivation and political action. Personal metaphysical agency: a rational-religious theism in the Dissenting tradition.

Energy

Mary Wollstonecraft

Conventional Newtonian.

Information

Mary Wollstonecraft

Conserved at both scales. Wollstonecraft's programme of education and writing assumes that recorded knowledge compounds across generations.

Internal Tensions

Where each persona's working synthesis strains against itself.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft's combination of universalist Enlightenment rationalism with a sharp eye for the specific historical situation of women has been read as both too universalist (insufficiently attentive to embodiment and difference) and not universalist enough (specifically a middle-class English programme) by subsequent feminist theorists. Her own biography — the unconventional marriages, the suicide attempts, the death in childbirth — was used against her philosophical reputation throughout the nineteenth century and contributed to her near-disappearance from the canon before the twentieth-century recovery.