Google Ngram Viewer

As Google marches forward in its quest to catalog all the world's books this growing repository makes for some fascinating research potential. Google's Ngram Viewer is a new tool that counts and plots keyword references. By charting two keywords at the same time, you can gain an interesting historical perspective. Plotting "creationism" and "intelligent design," for examples gives you an interesting look at the rise in the use of the terms following the 1830s rise of fundamentalism, the emphasis of the conservative Princeton Theology in the mid-1800s to early 1900s, the publishing of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, and the latest massive increase in their use with increased exposure due to televangelism and increasing political actions beginning in the 1970s and 80s.