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.
Adventures of Ideas
The civilising adventure of ideas — humanity, freedom, persuasion replacing coercion, beauty and truth and peace as the highest civilisational goods
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Adventures of Ideas (Late (Whitehead's last major book)) |
|---|---|
| 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 | Curved |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Non-local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| 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 | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Adventures of Ideas
Process time as the medium of civilising ideas — the slow centuries-long shift from coercion to persuasion. Relational, not substantival.
Space
Adventures of Ideas
Process space — the relational structure of actual occasions; the cultural-civilisational space of historical idea-development.
Matter
Adventures of Ideas
Material reality as emerging from concrescent process; civilisational artefacts and institutions as the material expression of ideas.
Observer
Adventures of Ideas
The actual occasion of experience — plural, embodied, both active and passive in the concrescent process. God as personal-persuasive agency working through the consequent nature.
Energy
Adventures of Ideas
The energies of creativity, persuasion, and the civilising adventure of ideas through history.
Information
Adventures of Ideas
Civilisational memory and inheritance — the preserved cultural information of the great civilising adventures.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Adventures of Ideas's relation to the technical metaphysics of Process and Reality is itself a scholarly question — is the book popularising the metaphysics or significantly modifying it? Whitehead's "Galilean" reconstruction of theism has been criticised by classical theists (as too finite a God) and embraced by process theologians (as more biblically adequate). The book's civilisational optimism (especially its faith in the long-term replacement of coercion by persuasion) was substantially complicated by World War II, which began six years after publication.