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.
Critias
Plato's unfinished 'Critias' — the war between ancient Athens and Atlantis
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Critias (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | not engaged |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | not engaged |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | not engaged |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Disembodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | not engaged |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Critias
c. 360-347 BC. The dialogue's narrated time is 9,000 years before the dramatic present (i.e., c. 9,400 BC); the dramatic present is shortly after the Timaeus.
Space
Critias
Athens / mythic Atlantis. The dialogue's geographic-mythological topology — Atlantis beyond the Pillars of Heracles, ancient Attica reaching to the Isthmus — is itself a philosophical statement about scale and history.
Matter
Critias
Unfinished late dialogue. The break-off point is mid-sentence, leaving the resolution of the war (and the implied lesson about hubris) only sketched.
Observer
Critias
Critias narrating; Timaeus, Socrates, and Hermocrates as auditors. The choice of Critias (a relative of Plato's, sometime tyrant of the Thirty) as narrator is dramatically significant.
Energy
Critias
Late-mythic-Platonic energies. The dialogue's distinctive register is mythological-narrative rather than dialectical-argumentative.
Information
Critias
Unfinished dialogue, breaks off mid-sentence ("Zeus, god of gods... having gathered all the gods into their most honoured habitation...").
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Source of the Atlantis legend that has been continuously reread (and often mistaken for non-fictional history) from antiquity through Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1626) to the twentieth-century Atlantology subculture. Influential as political-philosophical myth — Bacon's New Atlantis, More's Utopia, and the broader Renaissance utopian tradition all descend from the Critias-Timaeus combination.