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.
The Analyst
Berkeley's 1734 'The Analyst' — 'ghosts of departed quantities' — the philosophical critique of Newton's infinitesimal calculus
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Analyst (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Non-local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Non-local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Disembodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Revelation |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| 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
The Analyst
1734. Berkeley was 49 and had just returned to England from his three-year residence in Rhode Island (1729-31); he became Bishop of Cloyne later in 1734.
Space
The Analyst
London publication; Berkeley's Anglo-Irish bishop-philosopher context. The Royal Society debate over the foundations of the calculus (Newtonian fluxions vs. Leibnizian differentials) was at its height in 1734.
Matter
The Analyst
Single critical-philosophical pamphlet (~80 pages). Form is treatise-essayistic with numbered paragraphs (§§1-67) running through the argument.
Observer
The Analyst
Late Berkeley. The observer-philosopher is the Anglo-Irish bishop-philosopher (Berkeley would die in 1753) at the height of his anti-free-thinking apologetic work.
Energy
The Analyst
Polemical-philosophical-mathematical energies. The pamphlet's rhetorical force was substantial — it was widely read and replied to (Jurin's 'Geometry No Friend to Infidelity', 1734; Robins's 'Discourse Concerning the Nature and Certainty of Sir Isaac Newton's Methods of Fluxions', 1735) and stimulated a substantial mathematical-foundational literature.
Information
The Analyst
Single pamphlet of 67 numbered paragraphs. The 'ghosts of departed quantities' phrase (§35) is the most-cited passage.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Exposed real foundational difficulties in the calculus — credited with motivating the nineteenth-century arithmetisation of analysis. Berkeley's argument was philosophically substantial as well as rhetorically devastating; subsequent mathematicians (Lagrange, Cauchy, Weierstrass) had to work out the rigorous foundations the calculus had originally lacked.