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.
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
The single channel through which Aristotelian logic — the Organon — reached the Latin West for six centuries
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories (Mature (the late translation programme Boethius announced and partly completed before his death)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | 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 | 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 | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
Time as the framework of demonstration and inference — Aristotelian logical time, in which premises precede conclusions.
Space
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
The "place" of the ten categories — substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, passion — as the categorial structure of being.
Matter
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
Substance (ousia) as the primary category, with the nine accidental categories supervenient.
Observer
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
The rational soul whose syllogistic capacity gives it access to the structure of being.
Energy
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
The energies of demonstration — the activity of reason moving from premises to conclusions.
Information
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
Logical form as the discrete, finite structure that organises all possible scientific knowledge.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Boethius's programme to translate all of Plato as well as all of Aristotle was cut short by his execution under Theodoric in 524; only the Aristotelian half (and only the logical part of that) was completed. The medieval West therefore received Aristotle's Organon directly but Plato only indirectly (through Augustine, Macrobius, and the Calcidius Timaeus). The double-commentary form bequeathed to scholasticism a methodology — exposition and disputation — but also a tendency to treat all philosophy as commentary, which the Renaissance later reacted against.