a picture is worth a thousand words

On the Origin of Words

A portrait of Darwin with the most used words in the book “On the Origin of Species”.

Word list: species (1874), forms (895), natural (874), different (829), one (816), may (657), case (653), many (609), selection (595), can (585), plants (575), varieties (575), organs (570), animals (555), parts (507), two (470), great (422), several (406), conditions (389), distinct (387), thus (384), characters (378), generally (370), period (363), number (360), structure (357), certain (354), groups (351), life (339), existence (334), facts (325), change (320), individuals (314), long (314), much (312), first (307), important (306), see (305), variations (300), crossed (299), common (295), now (292), new (291), produced (289), closely (286), birds (284), time (284), even (279), become (278), developed (277), must (275), inhabitants (274), related (269), instance (262), often (262), large (260), degree (258), domestic (251), flowers (250), mr (250), modification (249), believe (247), breeds (242), islands (242), less (240), widely (233), modified (232), well (231), genera (230), use (230), habits (229), insects (228), state (228), though (228), another (227), formations (227), seeds (226), probably (224), appear (223), far (223), perfect (223), present (222), slight (222), descendants (221), class (219), yet (219), remarked (216), almost (214), living (212), might (212), hybrids (211), like (211), nearly (203), extinct (200), manner (198), parent (198), instincts (197), sterility (196), found (183), effects (182), variability (182), view (182), inherited (181), cause (180), country (180), successive (180), whole (179), vary (178), water (178), intermediate (177), doubt (176), highly (176), supposed (176), increase (175), seems (173), given (172), place (172), genus (171), formerly (169), kind (169)…

There is a huge difference between ‘Species’ and the rest of the words, so I discard it for the spread process but you still can find it in the title with appropiate size.

If you are interesting in the complete list send me an email asking for it and I will send it to you.

Rotated version.

Detail view.

Download PDF JO-D-100325-Darwin (428KB)
Download PDF JO-D-100325-Darwin-Rot (614kB)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 15:31 and is filed under Visualizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

7 Responses to “On the Origin of Words”

  1. Jose Llorens says:
    May 8, 2010 at 00:44

    Hey how do you do these kind of images ? theyre amazing, do you use some kind of generator or pick word by word ? cause that seems like a huge work!

  2. Words Grow – Juan Osborne says:
    July 12, 2011 at 12:27

    […] Here you have my huge collection of words trees. The first one represents the Darwin book “On the Origin of Species”. […]

  3. Adam Perzynski says:
    September 1, 2011 at 17:07

    This is really fantastic. Thanks for sharing your work in this way.

  4. Cheree Mcelvaine says:
    September 22, 2012 at 07:10

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  5. John Campbell says:
    January 28, 2015 at 01:02

    I may be of interest that in On The Origin of Species Darwin speculated that natural languages evolved in a manner similar to that of natural selection. This was the first use of a Darwinian process to explain subject matter outside of biology.