It is wrong to speak of coming into being and passing away, for nothing comes into being or passes away, but all is an aggregation or secretion of pre-existent things: so that all-becoming might more correctly be called becoming-mixed, and all corruption, becoming-separate.
Anaxagoras (c. 500 – c. 428 B.C.), pre-Socratic philosopher.
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Anaxagoras
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The natural state of things seems to be entropic, which is to say mixed; and the things that we take to be corroded or corrupted are mixtures of that which was once separated into various pure things.
While one might accept a theory of conservation in which, underlying all creation and destruction, is that which is neither created nor destroyed, Anaxagoras seems to have got becoming and corruption exactly backward.