Collaborative Future within Atla

In a post-pandemic, digital world, collaboration between libraries and librarians is more important than ever. This essay argues that Atla members should look to the association itself as a way of working together. I proceed first by outlining the great history of the association as a collaborative space for its members, highlighting three past successes. I then apply the four causes of success from these past projects to the challenges we face in a digital age that has been disrupted by the pandemic. I explore how Atla libraries can collaborate on collection development, digitization, and information literacy instruction, and what the opportunities and limits of working together may be.

Aristotle’s Physics

The word physics comes from the Greek word for nature: phusis. As Aristotle himself uses it, the Greek term translated as physics in this context refers to natural science as a whole, including cosmology, biology, chemistry and meteorology, as well as the sort of investigation of the fundamental elements of things, and the laws that govern their behavior, for which we use the term today. The work we call “Aristotle’s Physics” was not published as a book in his own day, and it was not intended for publication as it stands. Instead, like his Metaphysics, it is a compilation—probably by Aristotle himself—of a number of separate writings: they may have been research papers and/or the basis for lectures (the ancient title for the Physics is Lectures on Natural Science, but there is no evidence that this title goes back to Aristotle). Nonetheless, the writings which make up the Physics exhibit a clear thematic unity. Aristotle explains “nature” as “an internal principle of change and rest”: change is thus central to the idea of nature as he understands it. Linked by the notions of nature and change, these writings are all concerned with foundational issues in natural science as Aristotle conceives of it. It is clear from other works that Aristotle took natural science as a whole to be a systematic body of knowledge which should be presented and studied in a systematic order (see Meteorologica I.1 338a20-26 and 333a5-9); in this order, the material in Physics comes first. Aristotle’s other works on natural science, such as De Caelo (On the Heavens), De Generatione et Corruptione (On Coming to Be and Ceasing to Be), De Anima (On the Soul), and De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts of Animals) constantly make reference, explicitly or implicitly, to notions developed and argued for in the Physics—most especially to matter and form; the four types of cause, chance, teleology, and hypothetical necessity; and the nature of change and agency. Matter and form, and the four causes, also play a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysics: see especially the so-called central books (Books Ζ, Η, and Θ), and Book Λ, chapters 1–5. The Physics is divided into eight Books (perhaps corresponding to the length of a scroll of the papyrus on which Aristotle’s works would have been written); in the Renaissance each Book was divided into chapters by the publishers of printed versions, and these are still used for ease of reference.

Causation

This chapter explores the notion of causation involved in the central Buddhist thesis of dependent origination, the thesis that the existence of a person just consists in the occurrence of a causal series of impersonal, impermanent psychophysical elements. It is claimed that as this thesis undergoes philosophical elaboration and development, the underlying notion of causal determination is subjected to a process of dehomuncularization: anthropomorphic elements of the folk notion of causation are stripped away, leaving in its place no more than the notion of regular succession across the Humean mosaic. The Abhidharma doctrine of four conditions is examined and compared to Aristotle’s doctrine of four causes. There is also discussion of an Abhidharma controversy concerning whether cause and effect may be simultaneous.

Introduction. La technê et la connaissance des causes : Aristote et le modèle de la médecine

The theme of the specificity of medical causes in the Greco-Roman world is part of a wider research project on the notion of causality, the starting point of which is Aristotle and his seminal theorisation of the four causes. It therefore seemed useful to introduce this collection with a synthetic presentation of the Aristotelian conception of medicine, which is characterised by the knowledge of causes and represents a paradigm for the other arts and practical knowledge.

Monitoring progress with national and subnational health goals by integrating verbal autopsy and medically certified cause of death data

IntroductionThe measurement of progress towards many Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and other health goals requires accurate and timely all-cause and cause of death (COD) data. However, existing guidance to countries to calculate these indicators is inadequate for populations with incomplete death registration and poor-quality COD data. We introduce a replicable method to estimate national and subnational cause-specific mortality rates (and hence many such indicators) where death registration is incomplete by integrating data from Medical Certificates of Cause of Death (MCCOD) for hospital deaths with routine verbal autopsy (VA) for community deaths.MethodsThe integration method calculates population-level cause-specific mortality fractions (CSMFs) from the CSMFs of MCCODs and VAs weighted by estimated deaths in hospitals and the community. Estimated deaths are calculated by applying the empirical completeness method to incomplete death registration/reporting. The resultant cause-specific mortality rates are used to estimate SDG Indicator 23: mortality between ages 30 and 70 years from cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. We demonstrate the method using nationally representative data in Myanmar, comprising over 42 000 VAs and 7600 MCCODs.ResultsIn Myanmar in 2019, 89% of deaths were estimated to occur in the community. VAs comprised an estimated 70% of community deaths. Both the proportion of deaths in the community and CSMFs for the four causes increased with older age. We estimated that the probability of dying from any of the four causes between 30 and 70 years was 0.265 for men and 0.216 for women. This indicator is 50% higher if based on CSMFs from the integration of data sources than on MCCOD data from hospitals.ConclusionThis integration method facilitates country authorities to use their data to monitor progress with national and subnational health goals, rather than rely on estimates made by external organisations. The method is particularly relevant given the increasing application of routine VA in country Civil Registration and Vital Statistics systems.

The Poetics of Service: Making in the Age of Experience

This article proposes a framework for service storytelling by analyzing its key elements with Aristotle's Poetics and synthesizing them using the temporal structure of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Poetics refer to the art of making that is concerned with the general pattern of human experience. We use this framework to study the four causes of storytelling: material cause, efficient cause, formal cause, and end cause. The Hero's Journey is a cyclical model that encompasses both an ordinary and a special world. We utilize this model to synthesize the four causes into a phasic flow, including deficiency, growth, personalization, and transformation.

The Supposed Material Cause in Posterior Analytics 2.11

Aristotle presents four causes in Posterior Analytics 2.11, but where we expect matter we find instead the confusing formula, ‘what things being the case, necessarily this is the case’, and an equally confusing example. Some commentators infer that Aristotle is not referring to matter, others that he is but in a non-standard way. I argue that APo. 94a20-34 presents not matter, but determination by general features or facts, including facts about something’s genus. The closest connection to matter is Aristotle’s view that the relation between genus and species is analogous to that between matter and a hylomorphic compound.

Students’ Problems in Answering Reading Comprehension Question of Descriptive Text in The “Mandiri” Textbook Published by Erlangga at SMPN 1 Kepahiang

This research aimed to find out the students’ problems in answering reading comprehension questions of descriptive text in the “Mandiri” textbook published and the causes of students’ problems in answering reading comprehension questions of descriptive text in the “Mandiri” textbook published by Erlangga at SMPN 1 Kepahiang. The design of this research was a descriptive quantitative research. This research was designed based on the problems identified and arranged to adjust the main purpose of the research, so that the researcher employed descriptive method. The researcher took 50 students as the sample of this research. The instruments of this study were reading test and interview guideline. The researcher used a reading test in multiple choice forms consisted of fourty numbers of questions included in Mandiri textbook published by Erlangga. Another instrument was an interview guideline. The interview guideline was arranged based on the result of the reading test to reconfirm the result of the reading test and to get an indepth data on the causes of students’ difficulties in reading comprehension. The findings of this research were; (1) the students’ problems in answering reading comprehension questions of descriptive text in the “Mandiri” textbook published by Erlangga at SMPN 1 Kepahiang were finding main idea, identifying specific information, inference, and vocabulary; (2) there were four causes of students’ problems in answering reading comprehension questions of descriptive text in the “Mandiri” textbook published by Erlangga at SMPN 1 Kepahiang; (a) finding main idea is rather complicated, the students need to read the text repeatly to find the main idea; (b) the students need to read from the beginning to finish this description so that they can get the information and answer the questions given; (c) to find inferences they must know the text well and clearly; (d) There are some words that they find difficult to understand and they have never met. They answered that there are some words which are not familiar to them.