In the treatise On Coming to Be and Passing Away, what Aristotle discussed is this: the four most elementary substances known to us are earth, air, fire, and water. How do they change into one another and how do they form less simple substance such as flesh and bone? Through this essay, the author gave us two of his most remembered contributions: the four causes and the four elements. He used the four elements to provide an explanation for the theories of other Greeks concerning atoms, an idea he considered absurd.

亚里士多德在他的论文集《论生成与消亡》中提出天体和地球是由不同的材料组成的。月层以下的一切物体都是由土、火、水、气四种元素组成，而这四种元素还不是"最终基质"，更基本的是四种不同的性质——冷、热、干、湿，它们两两结合而形成了这四种元素。最终，四大元素的不同组合就形成了世间万物。