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.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The world is the totality of facts, not of things — and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Early) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| 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 | Finite |
| 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 | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Passive |
| Observer · Number | Singular |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| 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 | 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
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Wittgenstein presupposes a roughly Newtonian-Russellian time in which facts obtain at moments; he does not theorise time as such. The Tractatus's ontology of states of affairs consists of timeless logical structures, instantiated in the temporal world. "Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space... so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things" (2.0121).
Space
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Space (with time and colour) is one of the "forms of objects" — a necessary form of every possible state of affairs (2.0251). It is substantival in the sense that it is part of the logical scaffolding of any possible world.
Matter
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The simple objects are not "material" in any everyday sense; they are whatever the ultimate constituents of states of affairs turn out to be. Wittgenstein never says what they are; this gap was one of the early Wittgenstein's concessions to the Vienna Circle and one of the loci of his later self-critique.
Observer
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The metaphysical subject "does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world" (5.632). Observer Number is Singular at this transcendental level — there is one subject, who is the limit of one's world — and the subject is more like a coordinate-frame than a person. Agency is passive in the strict philosophical sense: the world happens; what the subject *can* affect is its own will, which is a matter of "what is higher" and inexpressible (6.43, 6.421).
Energy
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Not engaged. Standard early-twentieth-century physical energetics is presupposed without discussion.
Information
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The picture theory makes information substantival: meaningful propositions picture facts by shared logical form. The information is conserved in the sense that the logical structure of reality is invariant. Personal information is not preserved across death — Wittgenstein is famously laconic on personal immortality, and Tractatus 6.4311 says only that "death is not an event in life."
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Tractatus's self-undermining is its single most contested feature. If 6.54 is right — its own propositions are nonsense — how can the reader have been led anywhere by them? Resolute readers (Diamond, Conant) take Wittgenstein at his word: the book is a therapeutic exercise. Standard readers (Russell, Hacker) think the book genuinely presents a metaphysics that Wittgenstein later rejected. The author-stage shift to the Investigations turns precisely on which reading is right.