Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Disputed Questions on Truth
Truth is the conformity of intellect with thing — the foundational scholastic treatment of truth, knowledge, and divine cognition
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Disputed Questions on Truth (Early-mature (Aquinas's first major work after the Sentences commentary)) |
|---|---|
| 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 | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Disputed Questions on Truth
The temporal cognitive process of the embodied human knower; the eternal cognition of God who knows all temporal events at once.
Space
Disputed Questions on Truth
The created spatial world as the object of cognition; the immaterial God whose knowing is non-spatial.
Matter
Disputed Questions on Truth
Matter and form as the metaphysical structure of the known object; the abstraction of form by the cognitive subject.
Observer
Disputed Questions on Truth
The hylomorphic knower — body and rational soul — whose cognition Aquinas analyses in detail (agent intellect, possible intellect, abstraction).
Energy
Disputed Questions on Truth
The actuating energy of the agent intellect that abstracts form from sensible phantasms.
Information
Disputed Questions on Truth
The form abstracted from matter as the intelligible content; truth as the adequation of this content to the thing.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
De Veritate sits at the transition between Aquinas's early reliance on Augustine's illumination-theory and his mature Aristotelian-abstractionist account; some passages favour one, some the other, and modern commentators (Owens, Wippel, Pasnau) divide on how to read the development. The treatment of divine knowledge of future contingents (Q2, aa12-14) is among the most contested in medieval philosophy; Aquinas's solution (God knows future contingents in their causes and as present to His eternal vision) has been defended and attacked for seven centuries.