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.
The Principles of Psychology
The stream of thought, the will, habit, emotion, attention — James's 1890 founding synthesis of scientific psychology with philosophical anthropology
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Principles of Psychology (Mid (the major early work; foundational for both psychology and pragmatist philosophy)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| 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 | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| 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
The Principles of Psychology
Subjective time as the temporal structure of the stream of thought; the famous chapter on the "specious present" — duration as the phenomenological now.
Space
The Principles of Psychology
The phenomenological space of perception; physical space as known through the embodied observer.
Matter
The Principles of Psychology
The brain and body as the substrate of mental life; the James-Lange theory of emotion grounds emotion in bodily response.
Observer
The Principles of Psychology
The conscious human as the central observer — embodied, plural, both active and passive in the stream of consciousness. No metaphysical framework imposed.
Energy
The Principles of Psychology
The energies of will, attention, habit, emotion — analysed scientifically and phenomenologically.
Information
The Principles of Psychology
The continuous stream of conscious information; preserved through memory, shaped by attention and habit.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
James himself later regretted spending twelve years on the Principles — he came to see it as too much a compromise between scientific psychology and philosophical psychology. The relation between James's descriptive method and the more experimental psychology that emerged in the twentieth century (Wundt, behaviourism) is itself a continuing question. The relation between the Principles' broadly naturalist framework and James's later, more metaphysically venturesome work (the Varieties of Religious Experience, Pluralistic Universe) is the central interpretive theme of James scholarship.