Distant Reader - subject-chemistry-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 11 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 375,553 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 34,141 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 88. 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:

may, salt, will, spirit, fire, water, made, one, acid, little, much, parts, must, body, part, great, make, liquor, yet, bodies, matter, good, gold, well, though, also, two, many, nature, like, now, glass, time, without, put, shall, volatile, first, air, sulphur, wine, spirits, light, tartar, use, things, three, oil, found, reason

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are A course of chemistry containing an easie method of preparing those chymical medicins which are used in physick : with curious remarks and useful discourses upon each preparation, for the benefit of such who desire to be instructed in the knowledge of this art / by Nicholas Lemery, M.D., The Philosophical epitaph of W.C. Esquire for a memento mori on his tomb-stone, vvith three hieroglyphical scutcheons and their philosophical motto''s and explanation : with the philosophical Mercury, nature of seed and life, and growth of metalls, and a discovery of the immortal liquor alchahest : the salt of tartar volatized and other elixirs with their differences. Also, A brief of the golden calf, the worlds idol : discovering the rarest miracle in nature, ... / by Jo. Fr. Helvetius. And, The golden ass well managed and Midas restor''d to reason, or, A new chymical light : demonstrating to the blind world that good gold may be found as well in cold as hot regions, and be profitably extracted out of sand, stones, gravel and flints &c. .../ written by Jo. Rod. Glauber. With Jehior, aurora sapientiae, or, The day dawning or light of wisdom : containing the three principles or original of all things whereby are discovered the great and many mysteries of God, nature and the elements, hitherto hid, now revealed / all published by W.C. Esquire. : with a catalogue of chymical books., and Curiosities in chymistry being new experiments and observations concerning the principles of natural bodies / written by a person of honour ; and published by his operator, H.G..

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

volatile salt, sal armoniack, fixt salt, aqua fortis, nothing else, great deal, will remain, volatile salts, alkali salt, acid spirits, english books, two ounces, early english, acid spirit, well stopt, four ounces, come forth, several times, sublimate corrosive, books online, one another, great many, earthen pan, philosophers stone, two hours, one part, thought fit, aqua regalis, small fire, volatile parts, eight ounces, volatile spirit, must needs, two thirds, viol well, will come, text creation, elementary water, small quantity, common water, creation partnership, page images, may serve, acid salt, much like, much less, two drachms, red colour, acid salts, per deliquium

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A letter to a gentleman concerning alkali and acid being an answer to a late piece, intituled, A letter to a physician concerning acid and alkali : to which is added A specimen of a new hypothesis for the sake of the lovers of medicine / by Thomas Emes ... A course of chemistry containing an easie method of preparing those chymical medicins which are used in physick : with curious remarks and useful discourses upon each preparation, for the benefit of such who desire to be instructed in the knowledge of this art / by Nicholas Lemery, M.D., and A discourse made before the Royal Society, Decemb. 10, 1674 concerning the nature, causes, and power of mixture / by Nehemiah Grew..

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:

tcp, spirit, fire, body, tincture, salt, nature, glass, bodies, air, acid, water, volatile, silver, particles, operation, mercury, man, liquor, gold, corpuscles, art, alkali, wenceslaus, vitriol, viol, vinegar, vial, tartar, sulphur, stones, stomach, steams, soul, skin, seed, retort, receiver, principles, powder, porosity, pores, physician, phosphorus, phoenomena, philosophers, parts, paper, ounce, oil

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 salt, and Essays of the strange subtilty great efficacy determinate nature of effluviums. To which are annext New experiments to make fire and flame ponderable. : Together with A discovery of the perviousness of glass. : Also An essay, about the origine and virtue of gems. / By the Honourable Robert Boyle ... ; To which is added The prodromus to a dissertation concerning solids naturally contained within solids giving an account of the Earth, and its productions. By Nicholas Steno. ; Englished by H.O. 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?":

fire, parts, part, salt, water, body, matter, time, liquor, gold, things, reason, bodies, nothing, nature, t, self, ounces, way, quantity, air, thing, light, operation, others, spirit, manner, heat, motion, man, acid, weight, silver, bottom, place, oil, colour, mixture, substance, blood, use, acids, pores, times, vessel, divers, glass, grains, wine, men

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, do, being, made, had, were, make, been, put, does, has, having, found, take, said, did, give, called, find, let, come, say, drawn, used, according, use, taken, given, remains, dissolve, pour, know, keep, set, see, think, dissolved, remain, kept, done, thought, separate, mix, comes, pass, add

Proper Nouns

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

spirit, salt, acid, tartar, sulphur, god, water, glass, vitriol, mercury, spirits, antimony, wine, bodies, liquor, retort, volatile, c., iron, niter, peter, fire, alkali, oil, 〉, oyl, sal, chap, salts, ◊, copper, 〈, earth, nature, tincture, air, gold, tcp, aqua, principles, receiver, pores, stone, armoniack, lond, crucible, silver, gentleman, vinegar, particles

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, i, they, you, them, he, their, its, his, we, my, him, me, our, your, us, themselves, her, himself, she, l, one, thy, itself, thee, theirs, us''d, ours, ting''d, this, hers, elias, ''s, à, yours, whereof, ts, there, mine, mak''st, imself, ian, em, clog''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, little, great, same, more, good, many, such, much, small, first, true, white, several, volatile, able, common, new, red, acid, own, strong, hot, alkali, fixt, last, better, whole, fit, large, certain, least, greater, proper, cold, most, former, less, full, clear, different, natural, considerable, pure, second, particular, earthen, sufficient, long, like

not, so, very, then, more, only, also, as, now, well, much, out, together, yet, therefore, too, easily, up, again, even, enough, most, before, never, away, thus, here, all, else, sometimes, off, likewise, in, first, forth, often, still, at, perhaps, rather, there, less, thereby, especially, afterwards, soon, long, down, presently, far

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.

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