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Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The chicken or the egg
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The chicken or the egg is a reference to the causality dilemma which arises from the expression "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Since the chicken emerges from an egg, and the egg is laid by a chicken, it is ambiguous which originally gave rise to the other. To ancient philosophers, the question about the first chicken or egg also evoked the questions of how life and the universe began.[1] Cultural references to the chicken and egg intend to point out the futility of identifying the first case of circular cause and consequence.
Contents
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    * 1 History of the problem
    * 2 Responses to the dilemma
          o 2.1 Definitions
          o 2.2 Theology
          o 2.3 Evolution
          o 2.4 Syntax
          o 2.5 Cyclical Response
    * 3 Circular cause and consequence
    * 4 In popular culture
    * 5 See also
    * 6 Notes

[edit] History of the problem

Very early references to the dilemma are found in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was puzzled by the idea that there could be a first bird or egg and concluded that both the bird and egg must have always existed:

    "If there has been a first man he must have been born without father or mother -- which is repugnant to nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg." The same he held good for all species, believing, with Plato, that everything before it appeared on earth had first its being in spirit."[2]

Plutarch (46-126 AD) referred to a hen rather than simply a bird. His is Moralia in the books titled "Table Talk" discussed a series of arguments based on questions posed in a symposium. Under the section entitled, "Whether the hen or the egg came first," the discussion is introduced in such a way suggesting that the origin of the dilemma was even older:

    "...the problem about the egg and the hen, which of them came first, was dragged into our talk, a difficult problem which gives investigators much trouble. And Sulla my comrade said that with a small problem, as with a tool, we were rocking loose a great and heavy one, that of the creation of the world..."[3]

A modern analysis covering all of the major variants was authored by Christopher Langan, published in 2001 at the Mega Foundation website,[4] and subsequently included in his book of essays, The Art of Knowing.[5] It appeared again in The Improper Hamptonian,[6], was included in abbreviated form in a 2001 Long Island Newsday Q&A column featuring Langan[7] and was compactly summarized in Langan's 2001 Popular Science interview.[8]

[edit] Responses to the dilemma
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[edit] Definitions

In this case, the egg is assumed to be a chicken's egg. This is an obvious assumption since the question itself implies a link between the two.

If one assumes the egg to be a chicken egg then one must define what a chicken egg is:

    * If: A chicken egg will hatch a chicken

Then a bypass is allowed: An animal that was not a chicken laid the chicken egg which contained the first chicken. In this case the egg came first.

    * If: A chicken egg is the egg that a chicken lays

Then a bypass is allowed: A chicken (that hatched from a non-chicken egg) laid an egg (a chicken egg).

    * If: A chicken egg will hatch a chicken and was laid by a chicken

Then there may be an error of definition. If the definition of "chicken" used does not refer to "chicken eggs," then the chicken must come first, because without chickens there cannot be any chicken eggs.

    * If: The question didn't specify that the egg had to be a chicken egg

Then we could easily say that the egg came first, because fish had been laying eggs long before chickens were around.

    * If: The chicken came first because it had to hatch the egg

Then the riddle would make more sense, but would still be debated.

[edit] Theology

The Judeo-Christian story of creation literally says God created birds, not eggs.[9] However, a theistic evolution standpoint says that chicken eggs are how God created chickens.[10] Creation of birds (and other life forms) by God through superhuman beings is stated in Purāṇas[11] and Dharmaśāstras.[12]

[edit] Evolution

As species change over time, in the process of evolution, the first modern chicken was the offspring of the last direct ancestor of domestic chickens to not share that classification (likely the Red Junglefowl). Therefore, a non-chicken did, in fact, lay the first egg.[13]

However, the problem may not even be relevant from this perspective, as evolution is a slow and gradual process. The birds and their eggs evolved from an ancestor species into the species we have today over millennia, a time frame that vastly obscures the reproductive cycle between chicken and egg. At no point was a "chicken egg" created from a distinct "non-chicken" species.

This lack of distinction characterizes the blurry boundaries scientists erect between species and sub-species, whose differences are only apparent when referencing mutually isolated points along the time line (or between concurrently diverging species of a common ancestor) that show significantly dissimilar genetic information. Tiny genetic perturbations are being made each generation, and it should be clarified that these differences are between the generations themselves; the egg and the chicken it becomes are identical. Therefore, one may say for semantical purposes that the egg possesses the new genetic information before the chicken, simply because the egg precedes the chicken. But again, what makes this egg the first "chicken-to-be", and not its parents?

What was referred to as a chicken two thousand years ago is not exactly what a chicken is today, and the human classification of a species must evolve with the species until it becomes necessary to begin a new classification. If a specific generation possesses the genetic signature of what humans would technically classify as a chicken for the first time, then the egg has come first. However, this would be a vain effort, as the requirements would be arbitrary, and would be no different than declaring the next generation of domestic chicken the beginnings of a new species.

The nature of species classification is inherently macroscopic in time and is not compatible with the distinction between an organism and its offspring. The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, is ill defined, with no logical answer.

One could leapfrog from chicken all the way back to the beginnings of life in search of an origin, but eventually what constitutes an egg becomes unclear, as life originally reproduced through metabolic division. Whatever the case, the classical question becomes complicated, and serves to show that such a narrow, black-and-white attitude is not useful in philosophical analysis of life.

Essentially, all organisms began evolution as microscopic egg-shaped creatures whose descendants evolved into multitudes of complex species. Therefore the short answer is the egg came before everybody, generating eggs and sperm who combined and evolved with each generation into a more complex creature.

[edit] Syntax

One can consider the question inside the framework of experience, making the question concrete instead of abstract: "The chicken or the egg - which came first?" "The chicken" came first - in the sentence of the question. If the question is phrased differently, the answer is different.

[edit] Cyclical Response

One can also argue that neither came first, since the chicken is the egg and the egg is the chicken. Paradoxically this argument also proves that indeed both came first.

[edit] Circular cause and consequence

    Main article: Circular cause and consequence

There are many real world examples of cyclical cause-and-effect, in which the chicken-or-egg question helps identify the analytical problem:

    * Fear of economic downturn cause people to spend less, which reduces demand, causing economic downturn
    * Fear of violence/war can make people more defensive/violent, the resulting tension/violence will cause more fear.
    * More jobs cause more consumption, which requires more production, and thus more jobs.