Anyone that knows me pretty well will tell you that I have a strange obsession with Charles Darwin. I think it started in RE lessons when I brought up Darwin and was told that his work was blasphemous; that was a total age ago. Now I just collect any books I find on him and use him in every artistic opportunity I can get my mitts on. When I saw these prints by Sam Winston, I have to admit that I was thinking, 'what the fuck is this huge blob of tone?', that was until I read the blurb and had a few palpitations. Winston went through The Origin of the Species and split each noun, verb, adjective and other into a separate category, initially comparing it with Ruth Padels 'A Life in Poems' book about Darwin. Here, poetry and philosophy were compared to see if their language differed intensely.

For each word in one of the categories (verb, adjective blah blah) he applied a dot to his diagram, using varying shades of pencil to represent each one:

• 4H pencil was used to represent the 50567 words which were categorized as ‘Other
  2H pencil was used to represent the 38266 words which were categorized as ‘Noun’
  HB pencil was used to represent the 26 435 words which were categorized as ‘Verb’
  4B pencil was used to represent the 38266 words which were categorized as ‘Adjective’

  What I found so awesome was the sheer volume of adjectives used in Darwins writing. My main love for his work comes from the total passion you can hear behind his words and the beauty he gives to the progression of mans evolution. Maybe this is why I found Winstons diagram to be satisfying, it kind of confirms my adoration to be true.
  
  
  
  
  
  With the nouns, Winston created these frequency diagrams, comparing Padel and Darwins writing. My absolute favourite bits are 13 love 13 fever being together as well as 108 doubt and 108 man. Ooooooh I just love this all too much!