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 Homine
Hobbes's 1658 De Homine on human nature
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | De Homine (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 | Partial |
| 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 Homine
1658 publication; mid-Restoration; Hobbes is seventy years old; eight years after Leviathan and three years after De Corpore.
Space
De Homine
London publication under Charles II; transnational Latin republic-of-letters readership; Continental natural-philosophical-mathematical engagement.
Matter
De Homine
Human nature: optics, perception, imagination, memory, language, reasoning as computation, passions, deliberation, will.
Observer
De Homine
Late Hobbes synthesising his mature materialist-mechanist-anthropological position in Latin systematic form.
Energy
De Homine
Systematic-architectonic, materialist-mechanist, polemical-rationalist energies.
Information
De Homine
Systematic Latin treatise in fifteen chapters; the natural-philosophical-anthropological middle volume of the three-part Elementorum corpus.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
De Homine has been variously assessed. The English-language Hobbes reception has historically privileged Leviathan, making De Homine the least-engaged of the three Elementorum volumes. Quentin Skinner, Noel Malcolm, and the Clarendon Hobbes Edition programme have restored attention to De Homine as the proper philosophical-anthropological middle term in Hobbes's mature system.