Generation and corruption

Thus Nature employed from the beginning only two simple principles, from which all that which exists was made, namely, the passive Prima Materia, and the Luminous Agent which gave it form. The Elements proceeded from their action, as secundary principles, from the different mixture of which was formed a Secunda Materia31 subject to the vicissitudes of generation and corruption. 

There has Nature stored up all her treasures, establishing therein the principles of the generation and corruption of all things, and concealing them as behind special and secret doors. To know how to open these doors with sufficient facility so as to draw upon the radical Air of the Air, is to possess in truth the golden Keys, and to be in ignorance thereof precludes all possibility of acquiring that which cures all maladies and recreates or preserves the life of men. 

Following the development of Aristotle s ideas in On Generation and Corruption, the notion of an element has been characterized in terms of properties determining how substances react with one another to generate new substances. According to the... 

It is difficult to see how the account might be filled out retaining all of Aristotle s theses about elements and compounds. Moreover, any such elaboration would run counter to the widely accepted view that Aristotle had no notion of a measure of the amount of matter (Jammer 1997, 19). But what, then, is to be made of the explicit (if little developed) reference to the ratio between its constituents in On Generation and Corruption 1.10 (and several references in Meteorology IV to substances comprising predominantly, or more or less of, one or other of the elements) Without some such notion, it is difficult to understand how there could be a variety of compounds if all simple substances are to be found in every compound. Note that this otherwise arbitrary restriction might find some kind of rationalization in terms of the situation... 

Quotations from Aristotle are taken from Barnes edition unless otherwise indicated. DG abbreviates On Generation and Corruption, Cael abbreviates On the Heavens and Meteor abbreviates Meteorology. 

Aristotle, since at Meteorology I 346b2i-2 2 they were said to underlie generation and corruption. 

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