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.
De Anima
The soul is the form of the living body — and the active intellect is the puzzle that defined medieval philosophy
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | De Anima |
|---|---|
| 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
De Anima
Soul is the actuality of a living body in time. The active intellect is described as "eternal," but Aristotle is famously reticent about what survives the composite human person. Within embodied life, time is linear, the medium of growth and decline.
Space
De Anima
Standard Aristotelian cosmology. The soul is "in" the body in the sense of being its form, not in any spatial container sense.
Matter
De Anima
Hylomorphic: matter is the substrate, soul is the form. The living body is a hylomorphic composite, not a Cartesian-style two-substance affair. Aristotle's famous example: the soul stands to the body as sight stands to the eye (II.1, 412b18) — they are not two things but one composite under two descriptions.
Observer
De Anima
The Aristotelian observer is the embodied living being, with a graduated soul (nutritive in plants, sensitive in animals, rational in humans). Knowledge is built up through sensation, phantasia, and intellect. Active in cognitive engagement with the world. The metaphysical agency is cosmic-ordering — the Unmoved Mover is the final cause of all natural motion, including cognition.
Energy
De Anima
Energeia — actuality — is Aristotle's technical term, and De Anima is one of the texts in which it does the most work. The soul is the first actuality of the living body; cognition is a second actuality. Substantival, conserved across activities, irreversibly dissipative within the finite life.
Information
De Anima
The forms of sensible objects are received into the sense organs; the forms of intelligibles are received by the intellect. Forms are substantival informational structures, conserved at the cosmic scale. Personal information is famously unsettled in De Anima — the active intellect "alone is immortal and eternal" (430a23), but whether what survives is the individual or a shared intellect was the great medieval dispute.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
De Anima III.5 — a single short chapter on the active intellect — is one of the most disputed pieces of philosophical text ever written. Avicenna read it as support for personal immortality (with the active intellect as a separate substance into which individual intellects are received); Averroes read it as the unicity of intellect (one shared intellect for all humans, denying personal immortality); Aquinas held a position closer to Avicenna but with a robust personal-soul theology added. The text's brevity and ambiguity sustain all three readings.