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.
Institutio Oratoria
The good man speaking well — a complete programme of education from the nursery to the forum
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Institutio Oratoria |
|---|---|
| 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 | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | not engaged |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | not engaged |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | not engaged |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Mediated |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Partial |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | not engaged |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | not engaged |
| Energy · Ontological Status | not engaged |
| Energy · Conservation | not engaged |
| Energy · Dispersibility | not engaged |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | not engaged |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Institutio Oratoria
Education unfolds in time: Quintilian traces the orator's development from infancy through maturity. The history of rhetoric is progressive — each generation builds on the last.
Space
Institutio Oratoria
The forum, the school, the courtroom — space is the civic arena where eloquence is exercised. Not theorised philosophically.
Matter
Institutio Oratoria
Not a subject of the treatise. The material world is background to the human project of education and civic life.
Observer
Institutio Oratoria
The orator is trained to observe, remember, and communicate. Memory (XI.2) is a trained faculty, imperfect but improvable. Knowledge is mediated through texts and experience.
Energy
Institutio Oratoria
Not addressed. The Institutio is a work of pedagogy and rhetoric, not natural philosophy.
Information
Institutio Oratoria
Rhetorical and literary knowledge is conservable and transmissible: the Institutio itself is an act of codification. The art of memory (XI.2) treats information as storable through trained technique.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Institutio's deepest tension is between the republican ideal of free oratory and the imperial reality of Domitian's Rome. Quintilian writes as if the forum were still the site of genuine deliberation, but his own career was made possible by imperial patronage, not republican freedom.