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.
Intelligent Machinery
Turing's 1948 'Intelligent Machinery' — the earliest detailed AI research programme, including neural-network-like 'unorganised machines'
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Intelligent Machinery (Mid) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Discrete |
| Time · Freedom | 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 | Mediated |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Partial |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Impersonal |
| 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 | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Intelligent Machinery
1948 composition; 1969 publication (21 years later). Turing was 36 at composition.
Space
Intelligent Machinery
National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Teddington — Turing's institutional base 1945-48, between Bletchley Park and the move to Manchester.
Matter
Intelligent Machinery
Single technical report (~30 pages). Form is technical-discursive rather than tightly mathematical; Turing was writing for an audience of NPL administrators.
Observer
Intelligent Machinery
Middle Turing. The observer is the cryptanalyst-turned-computer-designer working out the philosophical-technical foundations of artificial intelligence eighteen months before he would publish them more famously in Mind.
Energy
Intelligent Machinery
Programmatic-AI energies. The report is the most concentrated single document of Turing's thinking about AI in the immediate post-war period.
Information
Intelligent Machinery
Single unpublished-then-published report. Its post-1969 reception has been substantial: many of its proposals (especially the 'unorganised machines' anticipating neural networks) were independently re-discovered by AI researchers who had not read Turing.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Earliest detailed proposal for an artificial-intelligence research programme — many ideas anticipating later neural-network and reinforcement-learning approaches. Sir Charles Darwin's dismissal of the report as 'a schoolboy essay' has become a standard example of administrative failure-of-imagination in the AI literature; its 1969 belated publication came too late to influence the field's early development.