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.
Instructions for Practical Living
Knowledge and action are one — the mind itself is principle (xin ji li), and innate knowing (liangzhi) needs no external verification
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Instructions for Practical Living |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-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 | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| 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
Instructions for Practical Living
Time in Wang's framework is the medium of moral action — the present moment is the only moment in which knowledge-action unity can be realised. The emphasis is existential rather than cosmological.
Space
Instructions for Practical Living
Space is relational — the mind constitutes the meaningful structure of the spatial world. "Outside the mind there are no things" means that spatial objects have their significance in relation to the knowing mind.
Matter
Instructions for Practical Living
Material things are emergent from the mind's constitutive activity — not unreal, but not independently substantial. Wang's famous flowers-in-the-mountain example illustrates: the flowers exist, but their being as beautiful or meaningful is constituted by the observer.
Observer
Instructions for Practical Living
The observer in Wang's philosophy is the morally active agent — embodied, endowed with innate knowing (liangzhi), and responsible for extending that knowing into action. Knowledge extent is total because liangzhi already contains moral truth.
Energy
Instructions for Practical Living
The energy of the Chuanxi Lu is moral energy — the motivation to act on what one knows to be right. Wang insists that genuine knowledge is already energised toward action.
Information
Instructions for Practical Living
Innate knowing (liangzhi) is the fundamental informational endowment of every human being — substantival, conserved, universally distributed. The task is not to acquire new information but to extend what is already known.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The central tension is between Wang's idealism and the Confucian tradition's emphasis on learning, ritual, and historical study. If innate knowing is sufficient, why study the classics at all? Wang's critics in the Zhu Xi school pressed this objection vigorously. A second tension is the Chan Buddhist resonance: Wang officially rejected Buddhism, but his doctrines of mind-as-principle and sudden insight look very Buddhist to his opponents — and to modern scholars.