Distant Reader - subject-philosophy-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 53 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 5,246,461 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 98,989 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:

one, may, will, things, god, nature, body, man, first, parts, reason, yet, also, thing, us, therefore, must, much, men, motion, part, matter, good, without, great, made, make, many, doth, time, like, self, another, earth, bodies, every, others, say, nothing, water, cause, either, natural, two, according, world, now, shall, well, place

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are An entire body of philosophy according to the principles of the famous Renate Des Cartes in three books, (I) the institution ... (II) the history of nature ... (III) a dissertation of the want of sense and knowledge in brute animals ... / written originally in Latin by the learned Anthony Le Grand ; now carefully translated from the last corrections, alterations, and large additions of the author, never yet published ... by Richard Blome., A general collection of discourses of the virtuosi of France, upon questions of all sorts of philosophy, and other natural knowledg made in the assembly of the Beaux Esprits at Paris, by the most ingenious persons of that nation / render''d into English by G. Havers, Gent., and Archelogia philosophica nova, or, New principles of philosophy containing philosophy in general, metaphysicks or ontology, dynamilogy or a discourse of power, religio philosophi or natural theology, physicks or natural philosophy / by Gideon Harvey ....

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

one another, nothing else, every one, must needs, every thing, like manner, straight line, tells us, many things, let us, one thing, every man, one part, whole body, animal spirits, much less, make use, many times, must necessarily, wise man, every part, english books, early english, living creatures, right reason, common good, natural philosophy, subtil matter, substrate mater, living creature, several parts, may say, made use, man may, one body, taken away, first place, take notice, tell us, books online, may easily, corporeal motions, will say, learned men, efficient cause, take away, gives us, give us, several sorts, will appear

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Peripateticall institutions. In the way of that eminent person and excellent philosopher Sr. Kenelm Digby. The theoricall part. Also a theologicall appendix of the beginning of the world. / By Thomas White Gent. Quæstiones in sacra theologia discutiendæ Oxonii in vesperiis, octavo die mensis Julii, Anno Dom. 1671, and A proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy. By A. Cowley..

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:

god, nature, world, man, body, earth, soul, reason, sun, tcp, philosophy, bodies, motion, thing, philosophers, men, matter, law, life, scripture, power, mind, truth, sea, religion, fire, science, chap, book, aristotle, air, water, senses, parts, natural, moon, lord, laws, gods, father, faith, creatures, church, art, substance, subject, spirits, spirit, principles, opinion

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 things, and The Christian virtuoso shewing that by being addicted to experimental philosophy, a man is rather assisted than indisposed to be a good Christian / by T.H.R.B., Fellow of the Royal Society ; to which are subjoyn''d, I. a discourse about the distinction that represents some things as above reason, but not contrary to reason, II. the first chapters of a discourse entituled, Greatness of mind promoted by Christianity, by the same author. 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, body, parts, thing, reason, man, part, nature, time, others, self, nothing, t, men, motion, way, matter, p., cause, place, bodies, manner, doth, water, motions, words, air, mind, power, sense, life, adj, figure, knowledge, end, light, whence, one, kind, hath, fire, a., heat, opinion, use, faith, truth, rest, name, actions

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, being, were, do, said, had, made, make, say, according, been, did, called, know, having, has, see, take, makes, think, come, give, taken, found, let, hath, find, concerning, done, seeing, believe, put, call, seems, given, known, am, move, understand, moved, appears, does, set, prove, appear, answer

Proper Nouns

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

〉, ◊, 〈, god, nature, c., earth, man, sun, world, matter, i., soul, chap, hath, plato, motion, christ, men, law, philosophy, bodies, iv, a., aristotle, water, v., vi, ●, divine, body, thou, de, natural, sea, mr., book, spirits, spirit, heaven, power, lib, moon, fire, l., reason, faith, sect, idea, gods

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, he, they, his, their, i, we, them, our, its, him, you, us, my, her, themselves, himself, your, me, she, thy, one, thee, ''em, theirs, ours, mine, itself, ''s, whereof, yours, ye, em, us''d, l, ‖, herself, myself, ha, thou, hers, dy''d, s, whence, ting''d, non, whosoever, ourselves, ay, yourself

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, same, such, great, many, first, more, own, good, true, several, natural, much, certain, little, common, whole, particular, greater, necessary, different, second, most, like, proper, least, former, less, equal, last, general, new, perfect, evident, cold, able, infinite, greatest, small, hot, contrary, rational, third, better, distinct, impossible, false, old, full, various

not, so, then, more, also, only, therefore, as, most, very, now, thus, much, up, well, yet, out, never, first, together, again, here, too, onely, that, is, rather, sometimes, even, else, far, down, there, all, likewise, indeed, hence, ever, easily, less, always, before, no, consequently, otherwise, away, thereof, forth, still, especially

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.