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Work by Aristotle

On Generation and Corruption (Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς; De Generatione et Corruptione), also known as On Coming to Be and Passing Away is a treatise by Aristotle. Like many of his texts, it is both scientific, part of Aristotle's biology, and philosophic. The philosophy is essentially empirical; as in all of Aristotle's works, the inferences made about the unexperienced and unobservable are based on observations and real experiences.

The question raised at the beginning of the text builds on an idea from Aristotle's earlier work The Physics. Namely, whether things come into being through causes, through some prime material, or whether everything is generated purely through "alteration." Alteration concerned itself with the ability for elements to change based on common and uncommon qualities. From this important work Aristotle gives us two of his most remembered contributions. First, the Four Causes and also the Four Elements (earth, wind, fire, and water). He uses these four elements to provide an explanation for the theories of other Greeks concerning atoms, an idea Aristotle considered absurd. The work is connected with De Caelo and Meteorology, and plays a significant preparatory role to the biological and physiological texts. Among the primary themes is an investigation of physical contraries (hot, cold, dry, and moist) and the sorts of processes and types of composition that they form in nature and biology. The theory put forward is meant to secure its position by elucidation the meaning of agent and patient, contact, process of generation, alteration, mixture, all things which his predecessors had failed to understand. It is thus, in some ways, more similar to the Physics, which is more general, clarifying the general notions of change, cause, matter, and form. It has not moved fully into an applied investigations found in the above mentioned scientific texts.

Aristotle outlined the types of change in Categories and Physics. Generation and corruption, also referred to as coming to be and passing away, are opposites and differ from all other forms of change. It is not a change of place, like moving up or down, nor an alteration like warming or cooling, nor again, is it a change in size, like growing and diminishing. Instead, generation is an ultimate sort of change: changing from one substantial form to another (observed in phase changes like boiling, evaporation, burning, etc. ), as water changes into air, or earth into fire. The elements, according to Aristotle, are composed of four primary physical contraries: Heat, Cold, Dry, and Moist. Each "simple body" has two of these qualities: Fire is hot and dry; Air, hot and moist; Water, cold and moist; Earth, cold and dry. The elements of the simple bodies are these contraries in the sense that it is just the physical contraries themselves that we perceive in water or earth. Aristotle presents a hierarchy within the primary contraries in terms of activity and receptivity. The contrary Hot and cold are more active, while moist and dry are passive qualities. In natural processes and compositions, heat and cold "act" on moisture or dryness and determine it so be in a condition. Hot and cold are again placed in opposition, so that cold is the deprivation of heat. Dryness is a deprivation of Moisture, therefore, Moisture has more formal characteristics (and drying makes earthen things crumble and disintegrate), dryness more material. This elemental hierarchy is found again in Aristotle theory of place [τόπος], or realms, in On The Heavens. Each simple body naturally tends to move towards its proper place: fire upward, earth downward, and air and water in the middle. Not only can the elements of each realm travel into the others, they are continuously recirculated by the heat and energy of the sun.

The most recent and authoritative Greek text is the Budé edition by Marwan Rashed, Aristote. De la géneration et la corruption. Nouvelle édition. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2005. This edition includes a French translation, notes and appendices, and a lengthy introduction exploring the treatise's contents and the history of the text.