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.
Colloquia
Latin conversation exercises that became a vehicle for satirical-philosophical Christianity — and a perennial Protestant-Catholic battlefield
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Colloquia (Mature (the work that grew through Erasmus's most productive decades and was repeatedly enlarged)) |
|---|---|
| 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 | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| 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
Colloquia
The fifteen years over which the Colloquies grew — Reformation's breaking out, the Italian Wars, the Sack of Rome (1527) — give the late dialogues a darkening political tone.
Space
Colloquia
The Latin-speaking learned space of sixteenth-century Europe — the Colloquies travelled wherever Latin was read and were translated into every vernacular.
Matter
Colloquia
The embodied Christian life — the pilgrim's shoes, the inn-keeper's account-book, the new mother's nursery, the soldier's wages — as the texture against which Erasmus's critique operates.
Observer
Colloquia
The literate Christian reader (initially the schoolboy, eventually the educated lay public) whose ethical formation the dialogues aim to shape.
Energy
Colloquia
The energies of conversational philosophy — the dialogue mobilises reasoning where the treatise can only assert.
Information
Colloquia
The propositional content of Christian doctrine and its institutional accretions — separated by careful conversation into what must be kept and what can be discarded.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Colloquies were attacked from all sides: Catholic reformers thought them disloyal, Protestants thought them insufficiently committed, and the Tridentine Index banned them outright. Erasmus revised constantly under pressure but refused to repudiate the substance. The book's posthumous influence ran along three lines: in Catholic humanism (especially in the Netherlands and France); in moderate-Protestant intellectual culture (Melanchthon, the Cambridge Platonists); and in the broad Enlightenment critique of "priestcraft" (Bayle treats Erasmus as a model).