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.
Gettysburg Address
"Of the people, by the people, for the people" — the founding text of an American civic religion in which the Civil War becomes a re-founding of the nation on the ground of equality
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Gettysburg Address (Mature (Civil War)) |
|---|---|
| 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 | 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 | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Tradition |
| 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
Gettysburg Address
The Address's structure is explicitly historical: four score and seven years ago / now / for the future. Time is the medium of moral testing.
Space
Gettysburg Address
The battlefield as sacred space; the nation as a spatial-political reality.
Matter
Gettysburg Address
The bodies of the Union dead; the soil of the battlefield; the physical reality of the war.
Observer
Gettysburg Address
The American citizen-mourner, called to take up the unfinished work; plural, embodied; both active (resolving) and passive (receiving the cause from the dead).
Energy
Gettysburg Address
The "devotion" of the Union dead — the spiritual-civic energy now devolved upon the living.
Information
Gettysburg Address
The memory of the dead and the cause for which they died — preserved through public commemoration.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Address's identification of 1776 (not 1787) as the founding moment was constitutionally controversial — a re-reading of the American founding through the Declaration's equality clause that the original Constitution's slavery compromises had buried. Garry Wills argues this was effectively a constitutional revolution. The Address's civic-religious frame has been read by some as a sacralisation of nationalism (Wilfred McClay) and by others as a properly limited civil religion (Robert Bellah). The Second Inaugural (1865) develops the theological reading further.