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.
Duration and Simultaneity
Special relativity's "time" is a measurement-coordinate, not the durée of lived experience — the two are not commensurable
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Duration and Simultaneity (Mature (the disastrous engagement with Einstein that damaged Bergson's standing among physicists)) |
|---|---|
| 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 | Relational |
| 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 | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| 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 | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Duration and Simultaneity
The decisive dimension: against the multiplicity of relativistic times, Bergson insists on a single universal durée that grounds the very possibility of measurement.
Space
Duration and Simultaneity
Space as the medium in which physical measurement operates — useful for the physicist, misleading when extended to lived time.
Matter
Duration and Simultaneity
Material reality (the Michelson-Morley experiment, the clocks of the twin paradox) is what relativity correctly describes — but the description is not the reality.
Observer
Duration and Simultaneity
The single universal observer of lived durée vs. the multiplicity of relativistic reference frames — Bergson insists the latter cannot replace the former.
Energy
Duration and Simultaneity
Standard physical energy is conserved; the dispute is about the framework, not the empirical findings.
Information
Duration and Simultaneity
Light signals as the information that synchronises clocks — they constitute the measurement-coordinate, not lived time.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Bergson misread the twin paradox: in standard relativity the asymmetry is real (one twin accelerates), not symbolic, and the traveling twin ages less in any frame. Bergson's removal of the book from his collected works (after 1931) tacitly acknowledged the difficulty. Late twentieth-century rehabilitations (Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher, 2015) argue the philosophical issues — the relation between measurement and reality, the status of simultaneity, the question of whose time is privileged — remain live, even if Bergson got the physics wrong.