On Generation and Corruption (Ancient Greek: Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς; Latin: De Generatione et Corruptione), also known as On Coming to Be and Passing Away is a treatise by Aristotle.
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.
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.
The elements, according to Aristotle, are composed of four primary physical contraries: Heat, Cold, Dry, and Moist.
In natural processes and compositions, heat and cold "act" on moisture or dryness and determine it to be in a condition.
Each simple body naturally tends to move towards its proper place: fire upward, earth downward, and air and water in the middle.
“Mixis has an important role to play in the analysis of homogeneous stuffs and is therefore an essential concept in Aristotle’s elementary physics and chemistry.” Frede 289[1] Mixture is a unique type of change or process, different from those described in the Categories: “mixis is not easily classified as a kind of change within one of the ten categories.
The 10th-century Al-Fihrist by the Arab author al-Nadim lists an abridgement of De Generatione et Corruptione by the Shi'a theologian philosopher Abu Muhammad al-Hasan ibn Musa al-Nawbakhti.
This edition includes a French translation, notes and appendices, and a lengthy introduction exploring the treatise's contents and the history of the text.