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.
Physica and Causae et Curae
The plants, animals, stones, and elements have powers given by God for human healing — a complete medieval natural-medical encyclopedia
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Physica and Causae et Curae (Mid-mature (Hildegard's middle period, between her three major visionary works)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| 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 | Reversible |
| 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
Physica and Causae et Curae
The cyclical time of the medical-natural year — herbs gathered in their seasons, diseases following their courses, healing taking its temporal course.
Space
Physica and Causae et Curae
The localised plant-and-animal world of the Rhineland; the human body as the small space within which the four humours play.
Matter
Physica and Causae et Curae
The principal subject: every natural substance is a material carrier of medicinal-spiritual power.
Observer
Physica and Causae et Curae
The monastic healer (Hildegard herself and her successors at Rupertsberg) whose careful observation discloses the hidden virtues of natural things.
Energy
Physica and Causae et Curae
Viriditas — the green vital force flowing through all living things — is the master concept.
Information
Physica and Causae et Curae
The discrete catalog of plants, stones, and animals with their properties; the systematic medical taxonomy of diseases and remedies.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The textual transmission is difficult — neither Physica nor Causae et Curae survives in an authentic twelfth-century manuscript; the principal witnesses are thirteenth- and fourteenth-century copies that have been substantially edited. Modern Hildegard scholarship (Newman, Glaze, Sweet) has worked to reconstruct what is authentically Hildegardian. The works' modern reception — particularly the "Hildegard medicine" popular in late-twentieth-century alternative-medicine circles — sometimes claims more for the historical texts than the scholarship supports.