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.
Substance and Function
Cassirer's 1910 treatise — the shift from substance-concepts to function-concepts as the structure of modern scientific knowledge
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Substance and Function (Early) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | NDet |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Curved |
| 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 | Mediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Limited |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| 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
Substance and Function
1910 first edition; 1923 second edition with relativity material. Cassirer was 36 at first publication and at Berlin (he had taken his Habilitation under Wilhelm Dilthey at Berlin in 1906).
Space
Substance and Function
Berlin — Cassirer's institutional base before his 1919 appointment at Hamburg. The intellectual space is the late-Wilhelmine Marburg-Neo-Kantian school (Cohen, Natorp) of which Cassirer was the most original younger philosopher.
Matter
Substance and Function
Single methodological-philosophical monograph (~470 pages in the original). Form is sustained philosophical essay across four parts.
Observer
Substance and Function
Early Cassirer. The observer-philosopher is the youngest leading voice of the Marburg Neo-Kantian school, working out the implications of the school's relational-functional epistemology across the natural-scientific disciplines.
Energy
Substance and Function
Marburg-Neo-Kantian systematic energies. The book combines philosophical analysis with extensive engagement with contemporary mathematics and physics — distinctive for its scientific competence.
Information
Substance and Function
Single methodological volume. The function/substance distinction is the central informational structure; the relativity-theory appendix (1923) extended the framework to the most contemporary physics.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Cassirer's earliest major systematic work and the methodological prelude to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The relativity treatment (1921 companion essay; 1923 second edition) made the book one of the principal early philosophical engagements with Einstein's theory; cited continuously in subsequent philosophy of science and Cassirer-scholarship.