Indeed, it is evident that the mere passage of time itself is destructive rather than generative because change is primarily a ‘passing away’. So it is only incidentally that time is the cause of things coming into being and existing.
physicsby aristotle
That becomes clear if you try to define the objects and things which supervene in each class. Odd and even, straight and curved, number, line, and shape can be defined without change but flesh, bone, and man cannot. They are like snub nose, not like curved.
For time itself is conceived as ‘coming round’; and this again because time and such a standard rotation mutually determine each other. Hence, to call the happenings of a thing a circle is saying that there is a sort of circle of time; and that is because it is measured by a complete revolution, and the whole measurement of a thing is nought else but a defined number of the units of its measurements.
