Distant Reader - subject-physics-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 17 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,031,310 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 60,665 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:

water, may, one, air, will, motion, yet, much, made, body, first, must, parts, nature, part, bodies, therefore, though, also, things, earth, two, weight, self, reason, great, many, shall, without, doth, time, make, experiment, another, like, light, since, matter, glass, thing, mercury, us, now, cause, place, less, either, man, according, atoms

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Natural philosophy improven by new experiments touching the mercurial weather-glass, the hygroscope, eclipsis, conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter, by new experiments, touching the pressure of fluids, the diving-bell, and all the curiosities thereof : to which is added some new observations, and experiments, lately made of several kinds : together with a true relation of an evil spirit, which troubled a mans family for many days : lastly, there is a large discourse anent coal, coal-sinks, dipps, risings, and streeks of coal, levels running of mines, gaes, dykes, damps, and wild-fire / by G.S., Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, or, A fabrick of science natural, upon the hypothesis of atoms founded by Epicurus repaired [by] Petrus Gassendus ; augmented [by] Walter Charleton ..., and A continuation of new experiments physico-mechanical, touching the spring and weight of the air and their effects. The I. part whereto is annext a short discourse of the atmospheres of consistent bodies / written by way of letter to the right honourable the Lord Clifford and Dungarvan by the honourable Robert Boyle ....

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

one another, must needs, let us, nothing else, one part, living creatures, will find, mercurial cylinder, included air, living creature, english books, early english, upper part, made use, external air, insensible particles, stagnant mercury, shall see, every one, first matter, natural philosophy, whole body, torricellian experiment, books online, foot high, every way, much less, take notice, one end, doth consist, thought fit, one inch, air within, taken away, like manner, must necessarily, one thing, us suppose, page images, one side, inches long, every thing, text creation, creation partnership, will make, royal society, exhausted receiver, fluid bodies, emancipated atoms, many things

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. A discourse of gravity and gravitation, grounded on experimental observations, presented to the Royal Society, November 12. 1674 by John Wallis ..., and Natural philosophy improven by new experiments touching the mercurial weather-glass, the hygroscope, eclipsis, conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter, by new experiments, touching the pressure of fluids, the diving-bell, and all the curiosities thereof : to which is added some new observations, and experiments, lately made of several kinds : together with a true relation of an evil spirit, which troubled a mans family for many days : lastly, there is a large discourse anent coal, coal-sinks, dipps, risings, and streeks of coal, levels running of mines, gaes, dykes, damps, and wild-fire / by G.S..

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:

water, air, sun, earth, motion, glass, body, bodies, experiment, world, matter, tube, nature, mercury, god, fire, elements, cylinder, vessel, tcp, spirit, reason, quicksilver, atoms, animal, weight, velocity, universe, thing, stone, spring, spirits, soul, scripture, receiver, quantity, principles, pressure, pipe, philosophers, man, loadstone, liquor, light, gold, effect, cold, chap, bladder, zenith

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 water, and A new treatise of natural philosophy, free''d from the intricacies of the schools adorned with many curious experiments both medicinal and chymical : as also with several observations useful for the health of the body. 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?":

air, body, part, parts, things, motion, t, reason, weight, bodies, self, water, thing, nature, time, way, place, inches, art, man, others, nothing, matter, particles, light, doth, cause, space, foot, force, manner, one, pressure, p., ▪, fire, surface, end, quantity, 〈, whence, experiment, heat, kind, substance, sense, side, men, proportion, silver

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, made, do, had, make, been, according, see, said, say, found, has, having, did, let, take, find, put, know, does, think, ''s, makes, come, give, suppose, done, seems, concerning, taken, called, call, comes, moved, thought, observed, fall, seen, appears, hath, set, appear, betwixt, included

Proper Nouns

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

〉, water, 〈, ◊, earth, air, mercury, glass, god, motion, experiment, nature, ●, sun, atoms, aer, c., bodies, tube, quicksilver, world, vessel, b., hath, a., matter, pipe, iron, fire, cylinder, vvater, spirit, receiver, loadstone, ibid, i., chap, pressure, aristotle, cold, sea, heat, light, weight, elements, t, heaven, vacuum, natural, liquor

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, we, i, they, their, its, them, he, his, our, you, us, him, my, themselves, your, me, her, himself, she, one, ours, theirs, thy, thee, mine, ourselves, us''d, herself, whereof, ''s, yours, itself, severall, o, ye, l, clog''d, ♑, ●, á, y, wil, unpump''d, unfurnish''d, u, turn''d, ts, stirr''d, s

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, more, such, many, great, first, much, little, small, greater, whole, certain, own, less, equal, most, several, able, true, least, second, former, good, full, common, new, evident, sensible, necessary, like, proper, long, high, last, particular, third, natural, lower, contrary, various, clear, considerable, hot, different, very, cold, solid, large, higher

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

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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