Yeah, I have a few slides, but I'm going to start off a little bit differently because this is a presentation on how to get published. So I'll start off with people if you have questions at the beginning. And then I'll answer the questions as best I can. So can we start off with a few questions? I'm sure some of you have come with some problems you've had with publishing or lack thereof. Yes, at the back. Thanks, Rory. Bonnie Stewart from Windsor in Canada. I'm going to try to adapt my question initially for Judith and frame something for you. I recognize that in the European context, higher ed is fully kind of government funded, but as, you know, in Canada and the US and other spots, it isn't necessarily. And so what I'm seeing with publishing, particularly for those of us who are early career researchers, is there are some great journals that are fully open, but a lot of publishing spaces are becoming more and more enclosed and have very expensive open access fees for digital journals, even though the writing is, you know, contributed by academics, the reviewing is done for free by academics. And if you have a $2,000 grant total, you can't pay for a $3,500 open access publishing fee, and it's not paid by your university. And I feel like this is a real challenge for at least large swaths of the open education community. I know it's not the kind of work you represent, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can work together to actually open access. Well, I can say that I don't think that we should be collaborating with those that have these very high publishing fees. And I think that it's a big mistake in Europe for governments to be paying huge amounts of money to the monopoly capitalist companies that are now really trying to take full control over all of academic publishing. So I would recommend strongly don't do it. And if you must get published in that particular high value or highly rated journal, is don't pay any open access publishing fees at all and just put your article out anyway. It's a pre-publishing on your site or on a repository, sped it around, put it on other places. And you can do it as long as it's a pre-published article, you can do it legally. And it'll get your article out there in any case. But I don't think that we should be cooperating with them at all. I think it's a huge, I mean, this is what you call open washing, that you're paying the big publishers in order for them to be open access. Robert from the Netherlands, I totally agree and I will want to add to the previous question. Recently, just recently, there has been an initiative to promote the diamond access open journals in Europe. I don't have the details directly at hand, I can look it up and make it available. You can, there's a kind of, what's it called, you can understand it, but they're also now doing all kinds of initiatives to promote this one. The second is that you mentioned the publishing, the publish or perish is actually the main course of all this publishing which is done and which you should do in those not open access journals. Otherwise, your career is harmed and there is, now I can say the situation in the Netherlands, there is now a recognition and reward initiatives around all universities to make, to get the pressure of this only publishing takes you any further in your career. And I think that would really deserve some attention to get away from this publish or perish way of working. But because that's the real cause and the third thing I want to add is what they call the predatory journals. There is not so many known about these kinds of journals. Now, you know, each one gets this advertised publishing in our journal through time of one month. Now, how good could be the review if you publish it or you send it in at first of April and this published at first of May and when you look at all those articles in those kinds of journals, it's always this one month. There can't be any good that could be a sign, but people don't know this. Yeah. Just to clarify what Robert's talking about is with diamond open access, you do not pay any article publishing costs. And the big one was, of course, they were pushing what was gold open access where you pay for in gold, you pay for the article processing costs. So that's it's a big actually diamond is only just become up as a label. And I can assure you that our journal is a diamond gold and access diamond open access journal. We do not charge publishing fees. Any other questions? Yes. No, go ahead. Oh, so following up on what Bonnie had mentioned and also open washing. And I would be I'd be really curious to hear from you what your recommendation would be to some of these, you know, younger researchers who are looking to publish. When you're looking at, you know, wanting to de-invest in some of these, you know, I would say conglomerates at this point, like that are double dipping basically like Elsevier and having people pay to publish and then charging people back to access it. The tenure promotion process at many institutions, at least in the in the US, really mandate for faculty to publish in specific titles. They're mandated by their departments, by their institutions. They are looking at, you know, job security and advancing their careers based on titles and their impact factor and whatnot.  Well, again, I'd say the same thing is don't pay the the APC to make it open. Some of them what $15,000 I've heard. I've seen $7,500. Don't pay it, get it published under the under the strict regulations they have and put your article up as a pre-pub. So as people do have access to it, but we're also finding, and I understood in the US was moving that way too, but I know Canada and a lot of places are, is that if your government funded, it has to be open access. And this is very new. And actually our journal, I believe it was the first open access journal in Canada, I haven't heard of any other, but we had a big fight with our government funding agencies at the beginning in the year 2000 until 2004. And we fought very, very heavily. We lobbied, we protested, did all kinds of things in order to get accepted. And we were finally accepted in 2004 as the first open access journal to be to receive a grant from the federal government. And believe it or not, in 2017 they changed their whole method and they say now everything must be open access. So we've come a long way since then. There was another question over here. Yeah. Thank you. Hi. Devil in the room, so I work for Frontiers. However, I do manage a diamond open access journal like yourself. My question actually has actually just been partially answered by you in terms of model. Would you think that in terms of scaling up diamond open access long term, is it essentially a case of direct governmental funding rather than researchers providing the resources? Because of course sustainability has to be considered here. And I'm curious to know what your thoughts would be in terms of long term issue and scalability there. Would it essentially be direct funding like you just described for your journal? Well, our journal is financed by the university. We won one position, a manager, not my position as editor, I'm faculty member. And we get a $30,000 a year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. And so that's where we get our funding. Now, the whole problem of funding and sustainability to me is very simple, but it's very difficult to get there. And the simple thing is that let's take one-tenth of the money that we're giving to the monopoly publishers and use that money to support open access and then use the nine-tenths that we save and put it into educating students, lower tuition or whatever and helping students. But a lot of people don't understand this, but the monopoly educational publishing industry is the most profitable industry in the world. Last year Elsevier, 36% Google net profit, yes, 26% for Google and Microsoft about 15%. Like it is they are making a fortune off of us because we give them everything for free and we give them our labor for free and then they sell it back to us. This is, to me, this is unsustainable. People talk about the sustainability of academic publishing. This is unsustainable. And so we have to work at it. And it's a very simple response is let's take some of that money and start supporting open access journals. And I believe there was a movement in the United States among librarians to start that process. I hope it continues. Thank you. We might be running a bit short on time. So if we could do your presentation and then we'll have some questions. Yeah, I'd rather answer people's questions and what they're concerned about. But I'll go in and I'm sure some of the concerns of people are in the slides as well. So I've already mentioned about a Rodel being a diamond open access and about the fight that we had with Shirk. And we are scopus. And so, yes, we are in the list of journals that that are accepted by universities around the world. You generally have to get into a scopus as in order for them to recognize. In many countries, they are pushing very heavily. They say, I've heard it so many times in developing countries, you must publish three articles a year in scopus journals. And to me, I don't know anyone in our field who publishes three articles a year in scopus journals. It's just absurd, but they are under pressure to do that. And so we're getting a huge number of articles being submitted that are just not of the not of a good quality. And we now have only a 10 percent acceptance rate for we get about a well over a thousand a year. And we publish only 40 articles a year. So there are some of the statistics you can see there. And here's a good diagram from Wikipedia on what diamond open access is. So you can see that it's free for all authors. It's free for the readers. It's peer reviewed and the authors retain copyright. And others like the gold open access, as you can see, is not it's not free if you have to pay an article processing charge. And it could be. It could be gold and not pay an article processes charge, but we're calling that diamond in any case. Some other journals besides the road, if your topic is open, open educational resources are open practice and international council for distance education journal. The International Journal of Open Educational Resources and a new journal that's just coming out the Journal of Open Educational Resources in higher education. Or you can look up the directory of open access journals and in there, 24 of 26 journals on open and distance education topics have no publication fees. So there's a wide variety there. Unfortunately, many of them are not scopus. And when it comes to tenure and promotion, some faculties look on that very seriously. The articles published under open select with Taylor and Francis get 95% more citations. So when they're open, you do get more citations and a lot more tenure and promotion committees are looking very strongly at the citations for your articles. And you get seven times as many downloads in open select in that one. So standard article publishing charges are around nearly $3,000. So again, we should avoid using them all together. I'd like to point out if your studies are about open education resources, we have together a repository of articles and reports focusing on open education on all different aspects of open education. And there's now nearly 3,000 records by thousands of authors, and it's a very good place to start if you're doing research on any topic related to open education. Now I'm going to get into some of the ditty gritty of writing a scholarly article. And this is not for the excellent writers. If you're an excellent writer, you can break all the rules and still get published. I'm not an excellent writer. I have been published, but I've done it by following some of these rules. And about rejections, I've been rejected as an author many times, more times than I wish to remember. I didn't cry all the time, but I did cry sometimes when I was rejected. And I'm an editor and I reject people all the time, and it hurts, it does hurt me. But Victoria Ray gave a very good, simple and succinct view of writing a scholarly article, and I've adapted it because I don't fully agree with her. Of course, I don't fully agree with anybody, so that's one of my problems my wife tells me. But there's a basic structure, an introduction, a literature review, a theoretical framework, a case study if it is a case study, if not maybe an example, they've got the data, the methodology, the results, discussion and conclusion. Now, before submitting, this is something that bothers anybody who's an editor of a journal, is read several articles in the journal, get an idea of what is being accepted. I mean, really, you can tell somebody submits an article that they've never looked at anything in there. And then check the style of the journal, is it APA or Modern Language, Chicago, whatever the style is, and submit it in that style. And it saves you time because our manager just looks at it, it's not an AP, we do APA, and we send it back to you.  No, it has to be an APA style. And we got one complaint from a guy, I said, well, if I send it to you in that, I have to change it to that style, and then I have to go to another journal, I have to change it to that style. And so they want us to do all the changing, all the work of changing the style rather than doing it themselves. But there are solutions to that, and I'll come to that in a minute. Read the submission requirements. We have other requirements, not just APA style, read them.  Check the word limit. And if there's a word limit, try to stick to it. And oh, you never, never submit two journals at the same time. This is a real no-no. And in our field, I know editors of different journals around, and we know who is doing that, and you get blacklisted. There are blacklists. We do not accept people who send it to two journals at the same time. So don't do that, please. Now, for those who, like the gentleman who complained to me about having to change the style, we recommended to him to use a reference manager. And as you can see here, there are all kinds of reference managers out there. And you can change the style. I can change a style from APA to IEEE like this, like this.  And so you can do that with a wide variety of different reference management tools. And for those who are sticking to open source, and I recommend it, is there are a lot of open source reference managers. They're not all high cost, and they're very good. And so if you're doing graduate work or research of any kind, and you're not using a reference manager, grow up. I mean, it makes life so much easier for you and for the people you deal with. What do reference managers do? Well, number one, in our situation, number one for you is you format the paper in different styles so as you can easily resubmit to different journals because you are going to get rejected at some point and you are going to think, gee, maybe I can get it into another journal. Rewrite it based on the criticism you get and send it to another journal. It may be if it's the same style, that's wonderful. If it isn't, get your reference manager and press the button. You can also insert, annotate, and organize your citations very simply. You can create bibliographies, and also they warn you of unintentional plagiarism if you're using too much of somebody else's work. You can share references with people. People ask me sometimes, do you have any references? People, I say, mainly my students, of course they are people. They ask for sharing references, so I go to my reference manager and I go through, click, yeah, that's available. I just copy, paste them, send them off. It's very easy to do. And, of course, there's a grammar aid of great importance, not just to English second language learners, but to English people too. Some of our worst articles are written by native English speakers. So it's not just about people, but English is a second language. How did I do that?  Something really simple, and it's surprising how many do not do this, is state the problem. If you have previous work on it, come out and say it right at the beginning. And then how are you going to address the problem? And then what are the implications for the field of study of open education? Very simple things to do at the beginning. The literature view. The first thing you've got to show that you've read the relevant literature. And on both sides, if you're a proponent of one opinion, you just show that you've read all the people who share your opinion. You must show what other opinions on it are that may be contradictory to yours and may be nice to put in an explanation of why you don't agree with them. And I've seen this a lot with the learning styles. There's a big debate on learning styles. If you are supporting learning styles, they'll send a long paper with 20 citations supporting learning styles. And they don't mention any of the 20 or 100 citations that are against learning styles. You can go either way. I think there's something to learning style, but I don't think there's a lot to it. I think there's something to it that's worth it. Again, you have to show both sides of the situation. If there are foundational texts, you should have them in there on the subject that you're writing about.  One of the biggest reasons for rejecting papers is that they say that the references are too old. And that usually tells us that this is about the fourth time round coming to our journal because then they haven't updated the references to the recent years. Explain how papers are relevant in your submission. So some just go through a long list, but they don't explain why they're relevant to the research they're doing in this particular paper. And identify gaps in the literature and say that no one has written about this or I wouldn't use the word no one, say very few people or it has not been, you want to hedge a little bit sometimes when you're making those statements. A theoretical framework. Another reason for rejection when people don't put their paper into a theoretical framework demonstrate that you understand relevant theories. Show how the relevant theories are in your paper. Explain your theoretical assumptions. And especially if you don't agree with some of the relevant theories, just explain why. And a lot of us don't agree with relevant theories. Which key variables are the important ones? Another way of helping to clarify your paper is give an example. It's a useful background to your paper. It can to illustrate a principle or thesis. Give an example of what you're talking about. These examples can clarify points to be made. I mean your whole paper could be a case study and then that's an example. But if it isn't, just a short one paragraph or two paragraph example helps to clarify things. Data and the methods. Explain what information you're using. Statistics, documents, interviews. What are you doing? Where is the information coming from? And how did you analyze the information? And really important in putting out the results. This is the meat of the paper. The data must be based on the research conducted in your paper. And people come up with all kinds of things. One of the worst things we're getting, and I'm getting a lot of them, and I blame it on an overemphasis on learner centeredness, is we're getting all kinds of papers where they say, oh, our students, we did a survey and they all agree that they collaborated. They were all satisfied. They say that their self-efficacy improved. And they don't put anything in there, even about what subject was being taught or whether the students learned anything or not. And we point them to our advice to the authors where we say, this is a journal about learning. We don't care if the students are satisfied. We don't care if they're self-efficacious. We don't care if they collaborate unless it leads to learning. So you have to put in there that they've learned something or you have some data in your paper that some learning occurred while you were doing all this. I'm not against students being satisfied. This is wonderful, but if they're satisfied and they didn't learn anything, yeah, I have a problem with that. I'm an educator. My job is to make sure that when they come into my class for the first time, by the time they leave, something has gone in between the ears. Something, they know something that they didn't know before. They have a skill that they didn't know before. And if they're satisfied, wonderful, if they collaborated to do it, this is really great. And if it made them more self-efficacious or whatever other opinion they have in your survey, these are wonderful things, but they're only wonderful in our paper, in our journal, as if they learned something. Some of them, maybe they should send it to a psychology paper where all the students were happy. That's important for psychology, maybe educational psychology, but not in the learning journal. So the data must speak to the problem that you posed and you need to organize results analytically and not chronologically. So you have to put your analysis together in that way. In the conclusion and discussion, you need to reflect on the broader implications of your results, summarize the findings, note the limitations of your study, and future research suggestions. And I'll tell you, if you took these things and just put them in a line and then filled in what it is for your paper, you've got a good standard paper. And I suggest that if you're not a good writer, like me, I'm not a good writer. I've been told that a few times. I have been published. I have been rejected a lot. I did say that. I didn't say that I do. I have been published. Some people have asked, you know, what kind of reviews to do. And I have 14 doctoral students. So they often ask me, what can I do? Human research is very difficult. So I've advised some of them to do it. I don't want it to go overboard all around the world, but systematic reviews are getting a good success rate these days where you go in and you take a look at different journals and you come up with a theme and you do a review on that theme and you come out with some conclusions and recommendations from them. And so I'd recommend that you look at those. It's a good way to start. These are some of the good ones that I have on here. But with that, I'll finish off and open it up for more questions. Hi, I'm DiGrafiz from the International University of La Rioja. And I'm going to jump straight back into where we were before the slides. I'm sorry. Because I very much agree with the opposition on publishing and publishers. I'm wondering what actions we need to take, not only as individuals saying, no, we're not going to pay these fees, but as a community and as education systems. What's the agenda for reform for us? And you think I might have an answer. I think we need to... Well, I mentioned the initiative of the librarians in the United States of starting in a small way to say that this amount of money is for open access and it's 4% this year. Next year it'll be 8%. Next year it'll be 12%. Initiatives like that are great. For me, I don't review for journals that are not open access. I will not review for them. I'm not giving them the pleasure of my labor. And I won't say that. I said I won't review unless you pay me. But they won't pay you. They'll take your money, but they won't give you the money back. That's for sure. So that's an individual way. And I don't... Having said I don't publish in non-diamond journals or none, I have from time to time as a co-author worked with people and done that. It's pretty hard to be really strictly principled on it. I wouldn't... I mean, good luck if you can be really principled and not do it at all. But sometimes you work with... I work with younger authors and it's important that they get published in this journal and sometimes I don't 100% adhere to it, but I try to do it in general. Yeah, thank you. Maybe I can elaborate a little bit on that because I think that's the main issue. I have a few words about me. I'm a university librarian at the University of Lille in France. I'm sitting on a French board for open access. And I'm also the vice president of the Liber League, so the League of Research in Europe. So I'm very happy to hear your position on what you said. So I'll elaborate a little bit on your question. I think that what probably we should do is sustain more bibliodiversity in the landscape. I know that a lot of... a big part of a system with transformative agreements with APCs and so on are based on the gold open access. We've a central role of publishers just like Springer, Wiley, Elsevier and so on. What we want to foster and to sustain is more bibliodiversity, so meaning sustaining the green model where we put on archives, just like archives, for instance, where the mathematicians put their preprints, you mentioned it, and also the diamond model you have mentioned. You talked a little bit about the report that has been sustained by Coalition S in Europe, made by operators and other partners. So I think this is a good way to try to introduce new models of publication. We are not alone on that. Europe has a central position in this league, but South America also. So I would really be very much in favor of... we start between North and America, Europe and South and America to build something in common. And maybe that's one of the solutions. Because you know Europe, in terms of publishing, is number one. North America is number two, and South and America is quite important. So if we work all together in that direction, then we change the model. That's the first thing. And the second thing, which is maybe even more important, is to change the assessment system of the research. That's the central issue. In many disciplines, we have promotions to tenure positions based on impact factor. That's the reality. So as long as the system is not changed, we will keep having the same problems. So again, that is the moment for that. Because we have started an initiative in Europe to try to reform this assessment system. And we hope that again, we will be numerous, not only Europe, but North and America, South and America and other people to change the model, not to rely on, I need to publish in high level impact factor journals. I need to publish 10, 15 articles a year. What is it about 15 articles a year? You cannot publish good articles with 15 articles a year. So if we change the assessment system, then we may be able to have a different landscape and a different way of publishing and of driving our research community. So I guess that is the moment now. So I'm very happy again to hear that it's something which is tackled in conferences like OE Global. Yes, I agree that the tenure and promotion system, well, it highly favors those established journals. And that is exactly why they can charge huge fees for their databases to our libraries, is for that exact reason that we must have them in the libraries and faculty need them in order to get promoted. And so we have to change that. I think I just have to mention that the time is well over our slot and we are streaming, so it might become a bit awkward. Maybe if there are any questions, Professor McGraw will be happy to field them. I think that we should just wrap up the session and say what a wonderful contribution this has been to OE Global and give the presenters a round of applause. If there are any questions, I mean it's an open education conference, please engage, participate and collaborate. Thank you, enjoy the lunch.


Welcome to this module 5 and lecture 5 of the course Aspects on Western Philosophy and this lecture will focus on Aristotle's criticism of Platonic idealism and Aristotle's own concepts of form and matter. So, the topics which we are roughly going to cover include Aristotle's intellectual contributions, refutation of Plato's idealism, then again Aristotle's theory of form and matter which actually is a supplementary to the rejection of Platonic idealism because he has to now provide his own theoretical explanation to this problem. So, before we go to the details, let us see some interesting quotations from Aristotle's work. So, what Aristotle says about certain things, knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. So, I am selected this because anyone who reads this knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom is reminded of Socrates because Socrates again is one person who said that is one and only teaching is that one should understand oneself, one should know oneself and that is eternally been philosophical quest from the very beginning both in the west as well as in the east. So, particularly in India if you read Indian philosophy you can see that the quest for knowing one self is so central in all Ubal Nishadik wisdom. So, in one sense the ancient thinkers share a lot. So, Aristotle also says that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom, then again happiness depends upon ourselves. So, there is a concept of happiness which Aristotle's philosophy presupposes or rather aims it and this is not a kind of happiness what by we understand by the term in the in our daily conversations like we are happy. It is nothing to do with the sensual happiness or something which is which can be equated as sensual pleasure. It is a kind of more a kind of intellectual happiness a happiness which you experience as a result of certain kind of a satisfaction in life, experiencing the whole meaning of life or ability to see life in its totality the term which Aristotle uses is Eudaimonia. Then again happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life the whole aim and end of human existence. So, all these concepts the concept of Eudaimonia or happiness is related to ethical living and ethics is related to philosophy or metaphysical principles like what is reality etcetera. So, in that sense Aristotle is again another great Greek philosopher who tries to present a comprehensive philosophical wisdom a comprehensive philosophical system which would explain the inter relationships between these concepts the concept of good life the concept of right life and the concept of right in its knowledge. Then again I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. So, I have selected these quotations from Aristotle's work because to show that what he aims it unlike today's professional philosophy professors Aristotle aims at a very practical task the experience of happiness in life the experience of Eudaimonia in life and here this is the last point I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. So, physically overcoming your enemy is not very important as far as a philosopher is concerned what do you gain from that you gain by conquering your enemy physically you gain probably a kind of momentary happiness a feeling of a momentary joy, but overcoming oneself one's own desires that is more important philosophically than anything else. So, this is a context the ethical the philosophical context in which we should try to place Aristotle when you try to understand his philosophy. So, I will begin with a quote from Bertrand Russell in his history of western philosophy. Russell says I read he came at the end of the creative period in Greek thought and after his death it was 2000 years before the world produced any philosopher who could be regarded as approximately is equal towards the end of this long period his authority had become almost as unquestioned as that of the church and in science as well as in philosophy had become a serious obstacle to progress. So, Bertrand Russell so beautifully summarizes the importance and relevance of Aristotle's Aristotle's contributions both in philosophy and in culture and in human civilization. So, with his work it is the human the western world had to wait almost 2000 years to get another philosopher who could equal it in excellence, but most importantly is that Aristotle's thinking or the world view which Aristotle propagated as almost become a dogma like church and dominated the entire European milieu which unfortunately or paradoxically we can say prevented further growth of critical thinking. Now, coming to Aristotle a little bit about his personal life he was born at Stadura a Macedonian city in the Greek world in the year 384 B.C. as a son of a physician. So, it was quite famous that Aristotle was the son of a physician from Macedonia and interesting information here is that his father was a royal physician he was the physician to the king Philip who is the incidentally the father of Alexander the great and since Aristotle was so fortunate to have such a rich and such a powerful student like Alexander. And then naturally being born as the son of a physician his initial training was in the science of medicine and he also became acclaimed as a physician during those days and then he studied under Plato for several years afterwards that is another thing he did. So, his mind was he could have like any other he could have settled down with his comfortable life of a physician, but Aristotle's curiosity curious mind philosophical mind was not satisfied with that. So, he was in search of an ideal guru a person who can teach him the real wisdom philosophical wisdom and he joined academy Plato's academy and there he became a very famous student of Plato. Plato himself acknowledged Aristotle's intelligence and his abilities as a philosopher and, but what happened was though Aristotle is no doubt the most celebrated among Plato's students he became he later became a critic of Plato most ardent critic of Platonic philosophy and he used to often say that wisdom will never die with Plato there is more wisdom philosophical wisdom to be sought. So, Plato is not the last word in everything and he later on what happened was after Plato's death he moved out of academy and he established his own school called Lysium though he he he spent a lot of time considerably long years in academy with Plato, but when he established his own school Lysium it was not modeled after academy, because in academy the emphasis was on mathematical knowledge speculative wisdom more abstract thinking was encouraged and Plato as I mentioned in the previous lecture has famously rotted down in front of his academy that no man ignorant of mathematics should enter, but here Lysium was a place where natural sciences particularly biology was encouraged and we can see that eventually Aristotle became a father of many of these sciences. Now, when you talk about his intellectual contributions they are immense intellectual contributions from from Aristotle particularly in the world of natural sciences and biology Aristotle's contributions are immense. He is the one who started the kind of systematization of I mean which which became very important in scientific analysis this this species denorah kind of thing. Then to supplement his investigations in natural sciences Aristotle almost we can even say invented though it is not correct to say invented though, but major contributions of Aristotle we can find in in logic. So, logic as an art and method of correct thinking was primarily developed as a systematic discipline by by Aristotle though there were there were philosophers prior to him were also employing logic. So, it was developed as a as a systematic discipline for correct thinking art and method of correct thinking it was primarily done by Aristotle. And Aristotle has also written extensively on ethics is Nicomachian ethics is a book which is even today referred by experts in many fields. Nicomachian ethics basically talks about it is also known as virtue ethics because it deals with virtue human virtues which and Aristotle it was one person who emphasized a lot on the cultivation of virtue. So, this contribution in in the world of ethics is still reckoned with lot of respect again aesthetics in which his idea of tragedy is considered as one of the the most unique contributions in aesthetic theory in the world. He talks about this concepts like tragedy for example is most sublime form of art and there is an objective of tragedy the ultimate aim of art is catharsis for him which is again related to his conception of edimonia or happiness. Here again I invite you to a quote from Bertrand Russell his history of western philosophy. Aristotle as a philosopher is in many ways very different from all his predecessors. He is the first to write like a professor even like a modern professor of philosophy his treatises are systematic his discussions are divided to heads he is a professional teacher not an inspired prophet his work is a critical careful pedestrian without any trace of patching enthusiasm very interesting and a very relevant observation by Bertrand Russell. So, he is a so this is one thing where Aristotle is distinguished or Aristotle is different from his predecessors that is a first one to write like a professor with more systematic approaches. He is not just a person who is who is inspired by or rather what Bertrand Russell says inspired prophet not an inspired prophet to some extent even Plato is an inspired prophet we can see lot of mystical elements in Plato and Plato though he opposed poetry often Plato refers back to a poetry the importance of poetry in the pursuit of truth in human life. So, this is when you talk about the intellectual contributions of Aristotle we should also see that Aristotle was not just an individual philosopher he was an institution and institution probably the longest the longest survived institution in the west where whose influence even today it is in there he influences human thinking immensely, but he almost survived he existed as an establishment till probably you know the modern philosophy modern period. Now, when you talk about against Plato there are certain as I already mentioned certain anecdotes certain quotes wisdom will never die with Plato there is to be explored further then again Plato is dear, but truth is dearer, because Aristotle it seems was once asked by someone that you are supposed to be the great master Plato's greatest and the dearest student why do you oppose your teacher like this then Aristotle says that Plato is dear, but truth is dearer see here you can see the professional approach of a philosopher that what is important personal relationships are important, but more important is truth as a philosopher he should be interested more to explore what is truth while academy was dedicated to speculative and political philosophy Lyceum took biology and natural science seriously I have already mentioned this on the one hand in Plato you can see a lot of emphasis on mathematics and abstract speculative philosophy metaphysics, but Aristotle would rather emphasizes more on concrete explorations in the natural world particularly in the biological sciences you might be remembering about that greatest painting where Plato and Aristotle where Plato pointing his hand up and Aristotle pointing it down Plato an abstract speculative thinker who is always interested in the world of ideas eternal ideas abstract ideas which are not part of this world, but Aristotle a practical man who is interested in this world what is happening in this world and the objects in this world. Now refutation of Plato's idealism the idea of universal essence we have already discussed this concept in the previous lecture the idea of universal essence and for Plato they are universal and objective realities. So, that is what distinguishes Plato's position for Plato these ideas are universal realities they are objective realities they have their own ontological space where they exist as reality objective realities they definitely exist independent of the objects according to Plato because even if objects perish these ideas exist according to them and they are eternal and in perishing. Now, when you come to Aristotle, Aristotle considered them as common nouns. So, this is again an observation by Bertrand Russell. So, you can see you know it is a common noun see when you talk about man instead of individual human beings when you when you say man for Plato it stands for the universal human essence and for, but for Aristotle it is just a common noun any name capable of universal application to the members of a class can be treated as this. So, what is important here is that they are not objective realities and and objective objects or things as Plato thought, but they do exist they are eternal even Aristotle to accept that these ideas are eternal, but they are not just they are not objective realities as Plato thought they they are. And here there is a very interesting argument which which Aristotle initiates against Plato's idealism this is called the famous third man argument which says that if a man is a man because he resembles the ideal man there must be a still more ideal man to whom both ordinary men and ideal man are similar and this will go on ad infinitum. So, the celebrated third man argument is expected to unfound Plato's idealism theory of ideas which which says that which categorically asserts that objects in this world are basically unreal copies and their reality depend on the way they partake in their ideal objects which are imperishable eternal ideas. So, third man argument says that if a man is a man because he resembles the ideal man there must be still more ideal man to whom both ordinary men and ideal man are similar and again the notion of imitation or copying used in the theory of forms runs into logical difficulty here. So, this is what Aristotle was trying to highlight because Plato was emphasizing these concepts that the world of objects are imitations or copies. But here this same metaphors which Plato used ultimately turns against his own theory thus to explain the similarity between a man and the form of man one needs a third form of man and this always requires another form it goes on like that to infinity. So, we never settle the problem, but we actually pass it on to the next level against theory of ideas again whether the ideal man is an ideal animal that is a very interesting question which Aristotle raises. So, because man according to Aristotle is rational animal man is a rational animal. So, man partakes in two ideas the idea of rational creatures and the idea of animals. So, now the question is whether the ideal man is an ideal animal or not if it is then you run into several contradictions. If he is there must be as many ideal animals as there are species or animals. So, it is not just one ideal animal, but as many ideal animals as there are species of animals and how the perfect and the eternal world be held responsible for the imperfect and perishable world of material objects that is a very substantial criticism argument against Plato's idealism. Because if you say that these ideas are responsible for this world which is perishable ideas eternal how can something which is eternal be responsible for something which is perishable. Now, again if you see the context of this argument we can see that mathematical and physical sciences treat of the quantity quality and relations of things. So, this is the context in which this entire discussion on ideas on forms and the refutation of Platonic idealism and subsequently introducing his own theory of ideas or his own theories of forms and matter form and matter is introduced. So, here Aristotle from the very beginning says that he distinguishes first philosophy or metaphysics from physical sciences which deal with quality a quantity and relations of things. Where first philosophy is the it deals with the category of substance that is the object and studies the causes of things the ultimate fundamental causes of things that is the objective of philosophical a investigations for Aristotle and it enquires into the nature of being as such that is why the most fundamental cause of everything regardless the inquiries into the nature of being as such regardless of all relations of time place etcetera. So, first philosophy does it or metaphysics does it the absolute and necessary being is the object of metaphysics and the eternal essence of things as opposed to the relative contingent and accidental is naturally a very important concern in metaphysics and Aristotle to shares it though he refuses or though who rejects Plato's idealism he never rejects this whole idea of eternal essence that is very important in metaphysics, but only thing is he is trying to argue or rather he builds up this argument from a different perspective he only says that you cannot be an absolutist like Plato. You cannot say that only ideas exist and these world is only a copy because the logic of copying will be counterproductive. Now again for Plato ideas as real beings existing apart from the individuals which express them. So, that is the there is a kind of independence the ideas exist independent of things and Aristotle says that this is not correct. If the general idea is the substance of the particulars or the essence of the things how can it exist apart from that of which it is the substance and essence that is a question which Aristotle writes. So, I repeat in the general idea or the idea the essence of the is the substance of the particulars or the essence of the objects the particular objects. So, there are objects and this idea is the essence of that object now the question is how can it exist how can this idea this essence exist apart from that of which it is a substance and essence and here we can see a rejection of the Platonism the general cannot exist outside of an alongside of the particular. You cannot conceive of a universal essence or an abstract essence outside the particular object you will have to find it in it it is not something which exists outside or alongside it, but it is something which is which exists in it. So, this is the point which Aristotle tries to make. So, ideas considered as such and apart from the things are not real beings or substances according to things and again the phenomenal world is not unreal for Plato it is an imperfect imitation of the ideal world or a mere copy of the ideal world or even a mere shadow of the ideal world, but here Aristotle categorically asserts that the phenomenal world is not unreal it is it is as real as anything else form and matter coexist in the world. So, this is the most celebrated among Aristotle's concepts Aristotle's theories the eternal coexistence of form and matter this world is real and hence an object of science see the rejection of Platonism amounts to saying all these things form and matter coexist and this world is a world where we can see their coexistence which is a real world. Since it is a real world it is worth analyzing it and studying it. Genuine scientific knowledge is not a mere acquaintance with facts knowledge consistent knowing the reasons and causes of things what they cannot be other than what they are. This is the objective of Aristotle's philosophy or Aristotle's metaphysics value. Now, when you consider Aristotle's view idea do not and cannot exist apart from things. I have already mentioned this the idea of a parent for example, cannot exist independent of concrete parents. The idea of computer cannot exist independent of concrete computers like these things which we use. So, ideas do not and cannot exist apart from concrete objects that exist in the world which we can experience through sense organs. The idea is inherent or imminent in the thing this is the point. It is inherent or imminent and idea is its form and cannot be separated from it except by abstraction. So, if at all you need to sort of isolate it separate the idea from the object. It is impossible to do that except in your thought where you abstract it artificially. Just because in thought you are able to abstract it does not mean that it exist independent of objects. It is the essence of the particular and with it constitutes an indivisible hall. So, you cannot separate it there is an indivisible hall. The idea and the object form and matter they cannot be separated. The moment you separate them then the object cease to exist. So, here I have a pretty long quote from again from Bertrand Russell. I will read it because I thought this is this would be interesting in this context to understand Aristotle's view. I read it. So, officially Aristotle's doctrine is plain enough. Suppose I say there is such a thing as the game of football. Most people would regard the remark as a truism, but if I were to infer that football could exist without football players I should be rightly held to be thinking nonsense. Similarly, it would be held there is such a thing as parenthood, but only because there are parents. There is such a thing as sweetness, but only because there are sweet things and there is redness, but only because there are red things and this dependence is thought to be not reciprocal. The men who play football would still exist even if they never played football. Things which are usually sweet may turn sour and my face which is usually red may turn pale without ceasing to be my face. In this way we are led to conclude that what is meant by an adjective is dependent for its being on what is meant by a proper name, but not vice versa. This is I think what Aristotle means. His doctrine on this point as on many others is a common sense prejudice pedantically expressed. So, this is again gradually Bertrand Russell again in his analysis of Aristotle tries to say that Aristotle finally takes us to a commonsensical perspective. Though on the one hand he does not want to leave Plato completely on the way. He takes Plato along with him to some extent, but at the same time he takes us to or he does not want to completely sort of do away with a commonsensical perspective. Now, in this context one may wonder what is what happens to matter, because in Plato we can see that when he introduces his theory of forms this is done with a clear separation of forms from matter. Essences are separated from matter, but then when Aristotle says that such as any such separation is unwarranted and counter predictive and not correct. Then what about Aristotle's matter? So, Aristotle says that there are different ways to understand Aristotle's conception of matter. Matter anyway is that material stuff to which all these qualities are attached to definitely that is a concept of base matter, but when we try to understand it from different perspective we can see this the individual, the particular, the concrete everything is referred as matter. Again something it changes, because as in the code which I just read out from Bertrand Russell we had seen that something which is sweet today might turn out to be so tomorrow. So, things change. So, that is material things change each concrete instance of matter has an inner purpose. This is a very typical Aristotle in India. An inner purpose, a purpose is inherent in each concrete instance of matter material object it is destined to become something. See for example, a wood, a wood is destined to become a chair for example, or a seed is destined to become a tree. So, this inner purpose which is inherent is technically termed as potentiality which will refer which will discuss in our next lecture, but at this moment you know we have to see that this is being referred to as potentiality which is inherent in matter. And Aristotle also says that when you if you if you if you understand if you try to understand matter as something which is absolutely independent a reality that is not correct. Aristotle will never accept that separation of form and matter. Matter has no reality apart from the form and again matter without the idea also is an abstraction like idea apart from particular object. So, you cannot separate idea from object similarly you cannot separate matter from its idea. Movement again you know when you talk about movement because we are talking about material world the world of objects. And the world of objects is we can see that it is under constant motion change is so universal. And movement presupposes subtractive and does not exist by itself you need an object to move and that object. So, then again neither the idea nor matter nor movement has real or substantial existence. So, they are all interrelated in that sense. So, let us take a very concrete example to understand it further. Let us take the example of a ballpoint pen. This is a ballpoint pen which I have and here you can see a ball this is called a ballpoint pen because there is it is technology such that there is a small ball over here and there is a pointed nib inside that there is a ball which rolls and it is designed according to a kind of unique technology. And from form of the ballpoint pen is constituted by the properties of this pen. So, it has several properties. For example, I mean I am talking about substantial properties see there are non substantial properties like red in color made up of metal and made in this particular place this company these things are not very substantial about it. What is more substantial it is as I mentioned it has a ballpoint and again it has ink in it by means of which we can write then again can be held by the hand. So, that you can write it is not something which is very huge. So, that you cannot you would not be able to hold it in your hand it can be held by the hand. So, these are things which make it a pen the ballpoint pen and matter is the material stuff to which these properties are attached to. Matter is the material stuff to which these properties which I have mentioned are attached to. And the material by which the pen is made is what Aristotle understand as matter. Now, when we see Plato's influence we can see that the form and matter distinction is typically platonic and every object is a combination of form and matter. So, you can see that the distinction which Plato maintains is not maintained, but these two categories are sort of maintained by Aristotle. And form is primary to matter according to Plato, but form and matter coexist according to Aristotle. And Aristotle's method is we can see very interestingly Aristotle is a master compromiser. Aristotle method is to avoid extreme view points and try to arrive at a middle point a middle path. Plato considered the material world as illusion and only essences as real as we have already discussed this aspect. And he denied all change as an illusion, because in this world we can see the world is always under constant motion. It is it is as Heraclitus said you cannot step into the same river twice, but according to Plato this these changes are illusions they are not real. And in this context it is interesting to see the contribution of the atomists who are who are actually materialist who emphasized a lot on the material aspects of reality and definitely Aristotle was influenced by them. So, the atomist propagates a unique form of materialism they held that everything is made up of atoms and also ultimate reality is constituted of atoms. So, the atomists like democraters epicures and all these people they are the classical materialist in one sense, because they held that everything is made up of atoms they are material atoms. And again nature of reality and the world can be explained in quantitative terms the these atoms are quantitatively different they are not qualitatively different according to according to these atomists. So, everything in this world can be explained in terms of these this this in terms of quantity the quantity in which atoms are combined explains the nature of a particular object. This is a very important point that according to the atomists atoms have no natural properties which is not agreeable to Aristotle. For Aristotle everything has a nature potentiality and that takes that object to actualize it is it is real nature. So, democraters and epicures are the best non atomists their theories have serious ethical implications I am not going to the details of these things in this lecture, but just to refer to them these two people they are the atomists the famous atomists.  So, that is associated with epicures, but Aristotle on the other hand rejects this this atomism for him or rather his concept of matter is unique it is not it is not developed out of this this theory of the atoms of or atomists which emphasizes a lot on quantitatively different atoms being quantitatively different from each other. For atomists everything can be explained in quantitative terms all qualities and nature of objects are results of combination of quantity. If qualities and properties are not actually there, but are only illusions then the sensible world cannot be trusted. So, this is a very important implication of atomism. If qualities and properties are not actually there, but are only illusions we it is our our experience such as that there are, but that is illusion then the sensible world cannot be trusted. So, this may have very serious ethical implications now Aristotle's matter on the other hand is explained in terms of substantial material elements like earth, water, fire, air and either the five basic elements material elements. According to Aristotle like any classical doctrine on this five material elements they have qualities distinguishing qualities like the like the Vaiseshi Ghaz of Indian philosophy again the five five material elements which each one is distinguished from the other by means of a distinguishing quality. Hence things have definite nature. So, because they are qualitatively different they have definite nature qualities can transfer through the matter this is what Aristotle says. And here we can see a very interesting comparison democratist on the one hand you have democratist and may other other atomist those who emphasizes on on on material atoms the entire reality world and reality can be explained in terms of this this this materialistic atoms. On the other hand you have Plato who talks about transcendental ideas and Aristotle tries to avoid these two two extremes and a middle path has been has been arrived at. So, he his philosophy is a compromise both form and matter are real all change is an evolution. We will discuss this this concept of change in the next lecture and when you talk about form and matter we arrive at this this very peculiar theory that form and matter eternally co-exist. They cannot be separated I have already mentioned this they cannot be separated they constitute a composite hall according to Aristotle. And form of an object changes when it evolves into another thing the classical example given is when a seed becomes a tree there is a whole process of evolution there are different stages in which the seed undergoes certain modifications certain changes. The material content undergoes several changes in this process of evolution and matter remains more or less the same though matter is differently designed different forms design the matter differently at different stages of its evolution matter more or less remains the same though there is a change of course, but at at the moment we need not have to worry about it Aristotle presents a teleological explanation of the world the functioning of the world. So, there is a purpose behind every change that takes place in this world. So, this explanation this teleological explanation makes the role of ethics very important in in life again forms are eternal and changeless like like Plato, but not transcendent. Aristotle agrees a lot with Plato by saying that forms are eternal and changeless, but they are not transcendent as Plato made in that for Plato they are separated they are different in in this sense we can say that Aristotle brings forms from heaven to earth. So, they were according to Plato they were there in a third third world in a in a in a world of abstract universal objective realities which is not part of this world, but Aristotle brings them to this world and forms are not apart from things, but in them as I already mentioned they are inherent in the objects or imminent in them forms are not transcendent, but imminent matter is not not being, but dynamic. So, these are and again matter realizes the form or idea of the thing in this process of evolution and every stage there is a moment of realization, because new forms design matter differently. When we talk about the material world the material world changes as and this change has been rejected by Plato, but Aristotle says it is not a complete change there is a purpose there is a teleology and only some aspects of the form of a thing changes it is not that the entire object changes, but only some aspects of it and as long as the thing remains in existence its essential form must retain remain the same. So, the essential form of an object remains the same see for example, an apple seed will evolve into an apple tree and not to a mango tree or anything else. So, this suggests that there is something there is a guiding principle there is a teleology built into the entire process of change in the material world and the form of the matter changes in those ways that are necessary for it to become an apple tree. So, that is what I meant there are there is a certain guiding principle that takes along with the object to change into another thing the form of the matter changes in those ways that are necessary for it to become an apple tree to become an apple seed and apple tree. But there are certain other implications as well before we really go to the next topic we have to see certain other implications of this rejection of Platonic idealism and introduction of Aristotle's unique theory which basically argues that form and matter eternally coexist. So, Plato rejected the world as illusion, but for Aristotle it is real. So, this world is a real world it is not a mere illusion or a copy for Aristotle and the world is not just an imitation or a shadow, but real studying is it is therefore, not worthless see there is an image of philosophers that they are not interested in this world of day to day world this day to day life they are. So, sort of people who are not interested in this world they are always lost in their own dreams they do not consider this world as very important for them something else a higher truth is more important and scientific and other kinds of other sorts of investigations are treated as worthless meaningless because ultimate objective is to know the truth which is which lies outside this world and this world is a mere shadow if this world is a mere shadow or a copy there is no truth in this. So, what is the point in searching anything trying to understand something in this world if this is a mere shadow. So, let us concentrate on reality that is the philosophical approach, but Aristotle has argued that this world also has substantial reality it is real like any other world. So, studying this world is therefore, important it is not worthless it is important he encouraged the growth of natural sciences because since the study of this world is important you need to devise a methodology by means of which the study of this world is initiated and that methodology is a method of science. So, encourages the growth of natural sciences and we can see that the systematic study of natural sciences in fact began with Aristotle. So, I have already mentioned this Aristotle since Aristotle student was very powerful man like Alexander. Alexander has appointed people to collect specimen and other things from different parts of the world for his teacher. So, Aristotle was maintaining a huge library during those days of course, a library of manuscripts along with several specimens of animals, barns, this and that all kinds of things he was collecting and analyzing, studying and systematically exploring them. So, the systematic study of natural science in that sense began with him and again classification of species and genre I have already mentioned this then the birth of logic because you cannot have a science and natural sciences systematic study of science without a logic a discipline called logic which is an art and science of thinking. And again when you talk about logic, logic involves two types of inferential operations induction and deduction. Induction is where you infer something from several particular instances of something you infer a universal principle. Socrates is mortal, Aristotle is mortal, Plato is mortal from this you infer that all men are mortal. Then again the other one is from the universal principle all men are mortal you infer that since Socrates is the man, Socrates is also mortal. So, this both induction and deduction which are integral part of logic that developed by Aristotle and the Syllasistic logic which is very celebrated very famous is again another invention of Aristotle. And there are very significant ethical implications Aristotle's philosophy as or his theory his principles have several very important ethical implications the purpose of life is Udemonia as I already mentioned. So, to be experienced in this world something which is not to be experienced after your death, but this has to be experienced this kind of an objective of life Udemonia happiness needs to be experienced in this world. And ethics is a very important science and it deals with actual human behavior it is not something which needs to be cultivated or ethics the objective of ethics is not something which is extravately or otherwise, but it is something which is important to live in this world a meaningful life. This world and life in it are therefore, extremely valuable and, but it is not a mere materialism as we have already seen. A teleological conception that adds purpose to all our actions and a higher purpose to life itself is inbuilt in Aristotle's philosophy. So, we will end with this code from Bertrand Russell Aristotle's metaphysics roughly speaking may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do mix do not mix easily. So, this is a very interesting observation by Bertrand Russell because you can see that Aristotle begins his theory his metaphysics with a rejection of Platonic idealism. What is Plato's idealism? It basically says that ideas alone are real and rejects the material world. Aristotle rejects it and introduces his theory of form and matter which says that forms and matter eternally coexist, but this theory is metaphysics does not deny the fact that form or essences or ideas are eternal. So, he retains Plato to a very great extent, but at the same time he does not want to do away with the world and make it an unreal a kind of near shadow. So, he wants to accommodate both. So, he tries to that is what Bertrand Russell says Plato diluted by common sense and all the difficulties in understanding him and appreciating Aristotle is due to this that he was trying to mix something which will not easily mix Plato and common sense do not mix easily. Thank you.