Ambrose Little

In De generatione et corruption ii 4, Aristotle presents us with an explanation of the three primary mechanisms of change between elements. The common interpretation of this passage, exemplified by Mary-Louise Gill and Mary Krizan, presents the mechanisms as transformations of one element into its consecutive element, one element into its contrary element, and two elements into a third different element. I argue that this reading is incorrect and propose a reading that understands the mechanisms in terms of a mutual exchanges of contraries.

The question “Are you what you eat?” is ultimately a question about change. When we eat, are the nutrients from the food simply added to the biological complex we call the body or are the nutrients a product of substantial change? The scientific literature on digestion often describes the process in the former manner, which, if it were the only way to describe the data, would prove problematic to an Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy. However, the interpretation of the scientific data is not so simple and can be understood within the framework of a broad range of philosophical perspectives. This paper is an attempt to show how it is possible to reconcile the scientific data of digestion with an Aristotelian-Thomistic natural philosophy.