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.
Categories
Ten kinds of being — substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action, passion — the basic types under which everything that is falls
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Categories |
|---|---|
| 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 | Finite |
| 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 | Cosmic-ordering |
| 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 | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Categories
Time is one of the ten categories — substantival in the Aristotelian framework (more relational in the Physics).
Space
Categories
Place is another of the ten categories — the where of substances.
Matter
Categories
Primary substances are concrete particulars; secondary substances are species and genera. The hylomorphic analysis is implicit but not developed.
Observer
Categories
The Aristotelian observer of the Categories is the rational animal classifying beings under their proper kinds. Active, plural; cosmic-ordering rather than personal-providential framework.
Energy
Categories
Action and passion are two of the categories; energeia (actuality) is implicit in the substance-accident framework.
Information
Categories
Real ontological categories preserve real information about being. Personal information famously unsettled in Aristotle.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Whether the ten categories are exhaustive, mutually exclusive, or organised by a single principle has been disputed since Plotinus. Kant's twelve are organised by a different principle; modern analytic ontology often modifies the list. The relation between the Categories' primary-substance ontology and the Metaphysics' more form-centred ontology has been the central interpretive question of Aristotelian metaphysics.