Distant Reader - subject-creation-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 21 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,428,592 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 68,028 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 92. 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:

earth, god, first, may, will, one, world, also, made, yet, things, man, great, nature, us, shall, must, now, time, water, body, therefore, though, light, waters, creation, doth, matter, like, much, without, day, make, every, whole, parts, many, another, sea, sun, air, part, well, might, deluge, according, thing, two, therof, place

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The theory of the earth containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo till the consummation of all things., The history of the creation as it is written by Moses in the first and second chapters of Genesis : plainly opened and expounded in severall sermons preached in London : whereunto is added a short treatise of Gods actuall Providence in ruling, ordering, and governing the world and all things therein / by G.W., and A new theory of the earth, from its original to the consummation of all things wherein the creation of the world in six days, the universal deluge, and the general conflagration, as laid down in the Holy Scriptures, are shewn to be perfectly agreeable to reason and philosophy : with a large introductory discourse concerning the genuine nature, stile, and extent of the Mosaick history of the creation / by William Whiston ....

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

let us, one another, six days, new earth, thousand years, every one, must needs, tells us, god made, new heavens, every thing, present earth, dry land, first earth, first day, natural world, god created, universal deluge, bring forth, whole body, whole world, whole earth, brought forth, living creatures, english books, early english, shall shew, much less, holy ghost, sensitive spirit, torrid zone, ever since, hundred years, primitive earth, visible world, whole creation, every way, books online, terraqueous globe, vegetative spirit, shew heerafter, heavenly bodies, lord god, like manner, one place, take notice, days work, must necessarily, every man, great deep

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Conjectura cabbalistica or, a conjectural essay of interpreting the minde of Moses, according to a threefold cabbala: viz. literal, philosophical, mystical, or, divinely moral. By Henry More fellow of Christs College in Cambridge. Geologia, or, A discourse concerning the earth before the deluge wherein the form and properties ascribed to it, in a book intitlued The theory of the earth, are excepted against ... / by Erasmus Warren ..., and The history of the creation as it is written by Moses in the first and second chapters of Genesis : plainly opened and expounded in severall sermons preached in London : whereunto is added a short treatise of Gods actuall Providence in ruling, ordering, and governing the world and all things therein / by G.W..

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:

earth, god, sun, world, man, creation, body, air, waters, sea, nature, deluge, mountains, lord, bodies, soul, scripture, light, life, hypothesis, flood, water, theory, providence, moon, matter, heavens, fire, chaos, theorist, spirit, serpent, regions, power, opinion, new, natural, men, divine, days, day, church, center, apostle, animals, angels, abyss, vapours, tcp, surface

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 earth, and A vindication of the new theory of the earth from the exceptions of Mr. Keill and others with an historical preface of the occasions of the discoveries therein contain''d, and some corrections and additions. 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?":

things, time, man, thing, day, body, part, parts, t, nature, way, therof, place, reason, light, others, self, creation, nothing, doth, air, earth, waters, men, days, state, life, world, matter, hath, words, water, power, years, scripture, creatures, work, form, places, word, fire, works, manner, end, beginning, rest, author, account, one, order

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, made, being, had, been, do, make, said, did, according, see, created, say, let, has, come, concerning, think, know, give, take, suppose, called, set, does, having, says, find, hath, found, given, seems, makes, done, appear, call, brought, taken, consider, becaus, seeing, put, came, fall, seem

Proper Nouns

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

〉, ◊, earth, 〈, god, world, sun, water, sea, deluge, nature, heaven, man, heavens, matter, waters, spirit, c., christ, creation, hath, motion, ●, mountains, adam, lord, moses, divine, body, natural, chaos, spirits, flood, light, paradise, angels, air, moon, life, chap, heat, men, thou, new, fire, providence, theory, gods, power, gen.

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, i, his, we, he, their, them, our, its, him, us, you, my, her, himself, themselves, me, itself, she, thy, your, thee, one, ours, ''em, theirs, mine, ''s, us''d, whereof, herself, ye, em, shou''d, yours, urg''d, l, encompass''d, whosoever, s, myself, hitherto, hee, elias, clog''d, c, wr, u, ts

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, such, same, great, first, more, many, own, whole, several, good, true, present, much, natural, last, like, new, little, greater, second, general, different, common, particular, least, less, proper, full, very, most, perfect, visible, former, highest, high, certain, necessary, divine, pure, old, greatest, doth, long, ancient, better, equal, contrary, third, sufficient

not, so, also, then, more, only, now, as, therefore, very, most, up, thus, first, well, yet, here, out, much, again, down, there, still, far, never, together, before, even, forth, indeed, that, ever, is, too, all, otherwise, rather, in, easily, thereby, sometimes, away, plainly, thereof, less, secondly, once, always, already, no

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.