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.
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
Clarke's 1704 Boyle Lectures — quasi-geometric demonstration of God's existence and attributes, more eorum mathematicorum
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (Early-career) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Both |
| 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 | 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 | Personal |
| 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 | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
1704 lectures; 1705 publication. Clarke was 29 at the lectures, having taken his BD at Cambridge in 1701 and having served as Chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich.
Space
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
St Paul's Cathedral, London (Boyle-Lecture venue) — the central institutional location of early-eighteenth-century English natural theology. The Boyle-Lecture series ran from 1692 to 1714 with annual lecturers chosen for their philosophical-apologetic capability.
Matter
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
Single Boyle-Lecture treatise (~280 pages in the original). Form is twelve-proposition demonstrative argument 'after the manner of geometers' (more geometrico).
Observer
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
Early Clarke. The observer is the rising philosophical-theological apologist who would shortly become Newton's principal philosophical interpreter (Clarke wrote the Latin notes to the 1713 second edition of the Principia and corresponded with Leibniz on Newton's behalf in 1715-16).
Energy
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
Boyle-Lecture-style demonstrative energies. The twelve-proposition format was intended to convey rational-demonstrative force.
Information
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
Twelve-proposition treatise. Each proposition is rigorously defended with extensive sub-arguments; the cumulative structure mimics the geometric-demonstrative form Newton had used in the Principia.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The defining English-rationalist natural-theological treatise; the cosmological-argument tradition's classic eighteenth-century statement. Continuously read in eighteenth-century philosophy of religion; the principal target of Hume's attack in the 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' (1779, posthumous); revived in twentieth-century analytic philosophy of religion (Plantinga, Swinburne) as a serious philosophical-argumentative resource.