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.
New Essays on Human Understanding
Leibniz's point-by-point response to Locke's Essay — the major continental-rationalist engagement with British empiricism
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | New Essays on Human Understanding (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 | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| 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 | Personal |
| 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 | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
New Essays on Human Understanding
The temporal unfolding of human understanding; pre-established harmony of monadic developments.
Space
New Essays on Human Understanding
Leibnizian relational space; the social space of philosophical dialogue.
Matter
New Essays on Human Understanding
Material reality as phenomenal-monadic.
Observer
New Essays on Human Understanding
Each monadic mind as observer; the human mind as embodied, plural, active.
Energy
New Essays on Human Understanding
The energies of human reasoning and perception; the petites perceptions below the threshold of consciousness.
Information
New Essays on Human Understanding
The accumulated philosophical-rationalist tradition's preserved insight.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Leibniz-Locke debate is the canonical seventeenth-century rationalist-empiricist controversy. Kant's 1781 Critique of Pure Reason can be read as a synthesis attempting to preserve insights from both sides. Contemporary analytic engagement (Margaret Wilson, Catherine Wilson, others) has substantially illuminated the debate.