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.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The mind at birth is a tabula rasa; all ideas come from sensation and reflection; certainty is bounded, but knowledge is real
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | An Essay Concerning Human Understanding |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| 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 | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| 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
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Locke treats time as a real continuum given through inner sensation (Book II.14) — duration is the perceived succession of ideas; time is its measurement against periodic motion. Real, substantival, linear, uni-directional. Time Freedom is Non-Deterministic in Locke's working framework; he is concerned to preserve genuine liberty of action against Hobbesian necessitarianism.
Space
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Space is given through outer sensation; it is real, infinite, substantival, three-dimensional. Locke is closer to Newton than to Leibniz on space, though he remains epistemically cautious about claiming knowledge of its "real essence."
Matter
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Substances exist independently; we know their qualities, not their real essences. Primary qualities (extension, figure, motion, number, solidity) are mind-independent; secondary qualities (colour, sound, taste) are powers in objects to produce ideas in us. Matter is real, substantival, conserved.
Observer
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Lockean observer is the embodied human person, plural, actively investigating its own ideas. Knowledge is immediate (from sensation and reflection) and finite — Book IV.3 is one of the great early modern statements of intellectual humility. Agency is active; the will is free under reason's guidance. The metaphysical agency is personal — Locke's natural theology of Book IV.10 is robust. Moral authority is reason, though revelation supplements it in the Reasonableness of Christianity.
Energy
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Not Locke's topic; standard early modern mechanical energetics presupposed.
Information
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Ideas are the relational informational currency of the mind; words signify ideas in turn. Personal information is conserved across death: Locke retains a robust Christian commitment to personal immortality and resurrection, even though the famous discussion of personal identity in II.27 grounds identity in continuity of consciousness rather than substance — a doctrine that has shaped every subsequent treatment.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Locke's account of personal identity (II.27) has been read in opposite directions since Reid: as a deflationary, psychological-continuity theory that prepares Hume, or as a substance-friendly theory in which consciousness presupposes a persistent soul. The Essay's rejection of innate ideas coexists uneasily with its acceptance of self-evident truths (IV.7); Leibniz's New Essays (composed 1704, published posthumously 1765) is a sustained, point-by-point critical reply.