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.
Divinity School Address
The miracle is not Christ's but the ongoing miracle of moral-religious sensibility in every soul — Emerson's founding manifesto of transcendentalist religion
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Divinity School Address (Mature) |
|---|---|
| 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 | 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 | 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
Divinity School Address
The 1838 New England religious moment; the longer historical arc of transcendentalist and liberal-Protestant influence.
Space
Divinity School Address
Harvard Divinity School as the immediate setting; the broader American religious culture as the addressee.
Matter
Divinity School Address
The embodied preacher; the material churches the address criticises; the living religious soul Emerson defends.
Observer
Divinity School Address
The religious soul as proper observer of the divine; the preacher as proper communicator.
Energy
Divinity School Address
The moral-religious energies of authentic sensibility; the institutional energies of conventional religion the address resists.
Information
Divinity School Address
The argument from felt religious sensibility to the proper structure of religious life.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The address provoked an intense backlash — Andrews Norton's "Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity" (1839) was a major formal rebuttal — and Emerson was not invited back to Harvard for 30 years. Its long influence on American religious thought has been continuous.