Distant Reader - subject-naturalHistory-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 22 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,876,795 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 85,308 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 91. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

one, may, like, also, will, great, yet, water, much, many, two, made, first, part, parts, earth, make, little, time, long, shall, nature, therefore, body, sea, found, another, bodies, small, well, without, good, now, called, men, things, others, though, several, man, place, see, us, must, three, reason, kind, either, use, colour

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Speculum mundi· Or A glasse representing the face of the world shewing both that it did begin, and must also end: the manner how, and time when, being largely examined. Whereunto is joyned an hexameron, or a serious discourse of the causes, continuance, and qualities of things in nature; occasioned as matter pertinent to the work done in the six dayes of the worlds creation., Pseudodoxia epidemica, or, Enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths by Thomas Browne., and Musæum regalis societatis, or, A catalogue and description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge made by Nehemiah Grew ; whereunto is subjoyned The comparative anatomy of stomachs and guts by the same author..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

inches long, must needs, two inches, experiment solitary, many times, one side, inch long, one another, make use, every one, three inches, foot long, much like, almost like, young ones, nothing else, like manner, early english, english books, will make, several kinds, wee see, tells us, long time, many things, bring forth, whole body, solitary touching, natural history, several sorts, let us, great number, books online, liuing creatures, one day, made use, one place, somewhat like, four inches, put forth, greatest part, saline particles, one end, see also, one part, animal spirits, may easily, naked eye, one may, either side

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are An essay toward a natural history of the earth and terrestrial bodies, especially minerals : as also of the sea, rivers, and springs : with an account of the universal deluge : and of the effects that it had upon the earth / by John Woodward ... Three physico-theological discourses ... wherein are largely discussed the production and use of mountains, the original of fountains, of formed stones, and sea-fishes bones and shells found in the earth, the effects of particular floods and inundations of the sea, the eruptions of vulcano''s, the nature and causes of earthquakes : with an historical account of those two late remarkable ones in Jamaica and England ... / by John Ray ..., and Arcana microcosmi, or, The hid secrets of man''s body discovered in an anatomical duel between Aristotle and Galen concerning the parts thereof : as also, by a discovery of the strange and marveilous diseases, symptomes & accidents of man''s body : with a refutation of Doctor Brown''s Vulgar errors, the Lord Bacon''s natural history, and Doctor Harvy''s book, De generatione, Comenius, and others : whereto is annexed a letter from Doctor Pr. to the author, and his answer thereto, touching Doctor Harvy''s book De Generatione / by A.R..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

sea, tcp, sun, water, nature, earth, body, river, man, world, bodies, matter, god, country, air, thing, stone, scripture, plant, parts, mountains, king, heat, fire, figure, english, countries, city, chap, west, time, sunne, south, shells, root, province, place, phaenomena, north, motion, moon, lion, iron, horse, head, hath, experiment, elephant, east, dog

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be like, and Miracles of art and nature, or, A brief description of the several varieties of birds, beasts, fishes, plants, and fruits of other countreys : together with several other remarkable things in the world by R.B., Gent. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

part, time, parts, body, water, others, things, place, reason, men, nature, kind, way, man, bodies, colour, p., side, day, end, thing, t, hath, manner, times, places, air, self, earth, use, heat, blood, motion, inch, nothing, head, one, name, figure, fire, cause, ground, substance, divers, fish, heart, matter, length, eyes, light

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, are, have, was, were, being, had, made, make, been, found, do, called, see, said, having, take, taken, come, hath, did, say, call, put, according, seen, find, concerning, think, seems, given, set, give, makes, brought, has, let, know, used, described, grow, came, observed, done, thought, eat, seem, fall, cut

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

〉, ◊, 〈, c., sea, earth, water, hath, god, l., ●, nature, chap, stone, sun, world, mr., bodies, de, matter, wee, doe, lib, river, salt, glass, aire, men, b., head, english, spirits, dr., islands, island, heat, tree, aristotle, man, caribbians, iron, whereof, pliny, air, mountains, heaven, motion, spirit, kinde, animal

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, they, their, i, them, his, he, we, its, our, him, you, us, her, themselves, my, me, she, himself, your, one, thy, itself, ours, thee, theirs, ''em, whereof, herself, mine, †, vp, myself, us''d, twelf, ting''d, shou''d, yours, s, hers, em, elias, u, severall, help''d, hee, f, clog''d, ye, wedg''d

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, great, many, same, such, little, more, small, good, several, first, long, much, most, whole, white, certain, like, common, true, greater, black, own, last, former, old, large, different, hot, full, second, strange, cold, high, least, thick, young, hard, best, new, short, natural, saith, particular, strong, few, better, third, able, greatest

not, so, then, very, also, more, as, therefore, up, only, much, now, most, well, yet, out, thus, sometimes, first, there, here, together, again, onely, long, all, down, almost, never, forth, even, rather, likewise, over, especially, somewhat, about, off, that, is, indeed, far, too, commonly, thereof, easily, away, before, in, ever

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.