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.
De Corpore
Hobbes's 1655 De Corpore on bodies, geometry, physics
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | De Corpore (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | 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 | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| 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 | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
De Corpore
1655 publication; mid-Restoration; Hobbes is sixty-seven; four years after Leviathan and three years before De Homine.
Space
De Corpore
London publication; Latin-republic-of-letters readership; Continental engagement especially with Mersenne-circle and Royal-Society-circle correspondents.
Matter
De Corpore
Body, space, time, cause and effect, motion, geometry, the natural phenomena (light, sound, sensation) — the materialist-mechanist account of the physical world.
Observer
De Corpore
Mature Hobbes assembling his foundational natural-philosophical-systematic account; engaged in the geometry controversy with Wallis.
Energy
De Corpore
Systematic-architectonic, materialist-mechanist, mathematically-ambitious-if-controversial energies.
Information
De Corpore
Systematic Latin treatise in four parts (logic, first philosophy, geometry, physics); foundational for the whole Hobbes-Elementorum corpus; combines philosophical-systematic exposition with disputed-geometrical-work and physics.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
De Corpore is the philosophical-systematic foundation of Hobbes's whole programme but has been less-read in Anglophone Hobbes-reception than Leviathan. Modern systematic-Hobbes scholarship (Skinner, Malcolm, Schuhmann, Jesseph, Leijenhorst) has been restoring De Corpore to centrality. The Hobbes-Wallis geometry controversy that ran through De Corpore's geometry section was a serious blow to Hobbes's mathematical-scientific credibility in his own lifetime and continues to be a source of cautionary-amusement in history-of-mathematics scholarship.