The chicken vs egg question has never been about chronology or science.
It’s been about religion vs science.
Science says the egg came first: something nearly imperceptibly not quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched a chicken. That’s how evolution works, with the egg coming first.
Religion says a god poofed a chicken into existence. The chicken came first, and only ever laid pure chicken eggs. The eggs will forever hatch a chicken and nothing but a chicken.
That’s the chicken vs egg thing. It’s not a puzzle at all, it’s just science vs religion.
Yes, thank you, you’re exactly right. The person you’re responding to is correct that it’s come to have science vs religion overtones, but that’s not what the expression meant to people for ages and ages.
a metaphoric adjective describing situations where it is not clear which of two events should be considered the cause and which should be considered the effect
I guess the overtones are a product of their times. Currently, it seems to be: is science/religion the “cause” or “effect”.
I always staked claim that it was a “scientific vs philosophical” question; but I never considered how timeline could change the overtones or underlying thinking of “The chicken and the egg” concept. Neat
You’re right, I shouldn’t have said ‘never’. It was a paradox in ancient history, but at least in my lifetime, I’ve read it as basically solved. That may be a relatively recent stance (since 100-200 years ago), but it doesn’t seem useful to continue presenting it as a paradox at this point.
first of all kudos on the citations; thank you for your effort.
I don’t think these prove that the question is about religion vs science. the question is philosophical, and the fact that some religious people have a take on it that doesn’t agree with what would be the scientific/technical answer doesn’t make it about religion vs science.
if a tree falls and no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? that would also have a scientific answer, and depending on the religion, you may have a religious argument that disagrees with the scientific answer. the question would remain a philosophical one, and not one of science vs religion.
We are so zoomed in evolution at this point that the arbitrary distinction between what is a chicken and what not doesn’t make any sense anymore. Evolution does some jumps, but it is still hard to actually draw the line where a nearly-chicken has not been a chicken yet. Maybe someone could fill in my mental gap in here for me, but hasn’t Richard Dawkins given the example of some animal (possibly a rabbit?) that is traced back in evolution and since you cannot draw the line when it hasn’t been that animal it is rabbits all the way down?
Yeah, the fossil record and dna analysis is such a gradient, any lines we draw are arbitrary. To be fair, those lines were always for our own convenience, in much the same way it’s useful for print designers to specify Pantone 032, but if most people look at the full colour chart they couldn’t even tell you where ‘red’ becomes ‘orange’.
It’s definitely rabbits (or turtles) all the way down.
We’re prokaryotes, and vertebrates, and mammals, and from there some people get bent. Are we apes? Genus homo? Where must we draw the line to ensure we’re not actually animals like other living things and were divinely inspired special creations?
I like simplicity. Life is a beautiful prismatic projection and it doesn’t matter that much what our Pantone swatch turns out to be.
Well, I actually completely agree with you and thought your initial comment to be quite interesting. I’ve never viewed this thought experiment as to be science vs religion.
My point in my previous comment was exactly that, all our lines and categories are arbitrary. They’re really useful to us, but in the end still arbitrary. I enjoy categorizing stuff and so I like taxonomy a lot. But I always have to keep in mind that the categories I choose are ultimately human made and can never represent the full spectrum of nature.
Pantone 032 feels to aggressive to me, can I have another color? :P
I’ve always interpreted it as which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?
But I’d just like to point out not all religions have that view of creationism vs evolution, and even within Christianity it’s really only your super conservative, and very loud, fundamentalists. Catholicism doesn’t have an official stance on evolution, iirc, the Episcopal church in the USA is fully supportive of evolution, as are most mainline Christians. Not to detract from your point or anything, I just don’t like seeing all religious people, or all Christians, lumped together with some of the worst examples of religiosity that the US has to offer.
This has vibes of “and why was she raped? it was her fault.”
To be fair though I haven’t even clicked the link and I know nothing about this. For all I know, maybe this person was literally Hitler and assassination was the only way to stop them. But even then, we can conclusively say that this was not chill.
Compared to other religions, I understand that take, if we neglect stuff like not living up to their own doctrine of, e.g., equal rights between women and men, or the Khalistan movement, which has caused death and abused human rights on several occasions, also by killing civilians.
Still, as most organized religions, it became emergent as a tool of mass control and subjugation. Moral behaviour is not formed by critical thought and self-reflection, but by devotion to some mysterious higher power. Which is and always has been a core issue of problematic behaviour we can so often observe today with religious people. A side-effect is that it has the danger of hindering progress and societal evolution by having a creationism as one of it’s core teachings, as far as I know.
A further form of subjugation, hindering freedom of individual human (and harmless) expression, can be found among the Kakkars. For example the “dress-code” with having uncut hair, cotton undergarments etc…
I could go on. So to make it short, no, religions are usually detrimental for the long term constructive development of humanity and Sikhism is no exception.
A lot of what you say can be applied to other, non-religious cultures, not least that of the west, albeit in different measure. Any society will develop an overarching system of rules and standards; it’s necessary to avoid anarchy, which is more inimical to the broader progress of mankind. People naturally band together, it’s an evolutionary trait, so regardless of what intangible strictures those tribes are subject to, there will always be friction between and indeed amongst them. Voltaire said “If God did not exist it would be necessary to create him.” and he was dead right, he just didn’t mean ‘God’ in the strictly theistic sense.
Ultimately, people are people, meaning they need reeling in or things go to shit. Perhaps there exists an ideal set of circumstances under which civilised man can live peacefully without noticeably impinging on his moral objectivity, but let’s not hold our breath. As long as there are groups, there will be some cunts who tighten the shackles for everyone, whether it be by breaking the rules, or making the rules.
So yes, all religions are bad, but in the spirit of catching all, I’d go broader.
I’ve always interpreted it as which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?
I agree. And this boils down to how you define ‘chicken egg’. If the definition is “egg laid by a chicken”, then the chicken had to have come first. If it’s “egg that hatches a chick” (which will grow into a chicken), then the egg must have come first. But this ignores the pretty huge problem of picking a precise point on the evolutionary timeline where a non-chicken gave birth to a chicken. There isn’t going to be such a clearly-defined point.
I think there are two valid scientific/philosophical answers without taking religion into it, based on one question:
Are we specifically talking a chicken egg, or the concept of an egg?
In the former case, eggshells contain compounds that cannot exist in nature, and must come from a creature. a chicken egg cannot exist without a chicken before it, thus the chicken came first.
In the latter case, various evolutionary splits happened between animals evolving egg developing capability and some animals evolving into chickens. From this we can say that the egg came before the chicken.
Worst case, this solved exactly nothing. Best case, it can be an exercise in reasoning.
Well some of us are not only ignorant but had our critical thinking skills to varying levels stunted by shitty education. To me the answer didn’t necessarily matter as long as people agree both exist, but I’m glad to now have an answer grounded in science rather than relying on philosophical musing
but had our critical thinking skills to varying levels stunted by shitty education.
I’ve also noticed that everyone I went to school with who got good grades is a dunce. But everyone who got shitty grades with me was much easier to talk to.
I never have to explain in verbose detail what I mean by every fragment of a sentence to someone who got shitty grades in school. I had a principal at one school I went to who was an idiot.
Every time another group of students stole my hat and there was a coordinated effort to keep it away from me, I had no choice but to go to the principal, because the teachers wouldn’t help me either.
Every single time this happened, the principal, with zero self awareness would say “what do you mean ____ stole your hat? did you give it to him?” Then I had to explain in vivid detail each thing that happened for 15 minutes, like I was programming a robot-arm in a factory to this idiot with no ability to listen and think.
George Carlin used to rant about how schools teach kids to just barely be smart enough to pull levers and push buttons, but never to critically think about things or to solve problems they don’t have a pre-planned solution for. and that’s why I hated going to school, as high functioning autistic man, when I was in school, they always wanted me to fit into a cookie-cutter path they set for me, but I never went along with it.
This one boomer I know refuses to ever use anything except for the official tool you’re supposed to use for each thing. So I ask him, “well if this other pair of plyers does the job, why can’t I just use this one if I can make it work.?” “IT’S NOT MEANT FOR THAT!” with no good reason for not wanting me to help him by using that other pair of plyers that I can make work.
I quit high school about half way through my 10th grade year one day when literally everyone in the school yelled at me when I tried to talk about literally anything. I just got my stuff out of my locker and walked home.
I don’t like this because it’s not addressing the actual saying. Obviously the saying is about chicken eggs specifically.
But I’ve always felt obviously the egg came first. The first chicken was born in an egg, so the egg came first. That egg could have been produced from a creature with a mutation which caused it to produce the first chicken egg when it is not itself the exact same species.
But I think it’s not about chicken at all. People just don’t know which creature on earth laid the first egg, so the chicken is just a stand-in. As chicken are the species we most associate with eggs for obvious reasons. What came first: the first egg or the first egg-laying creature? Has to be the egg-laying creature, but then how did that get born?
I believe this is correct as I read in a book somewhere that it was a kind of proto-chicken if you will, that laid an egg of which came a the first chicken.
The more interesting question is how long did it take for the first BBQ Chicken.
Ah, but when that line of tiny change is so arbitrary… Is it a true chicken until it grows up and fulfils its destiny? Is it a chicken based purely on its genetic code, so the egg whence it hatched is a chicken egg; or is it truly a chicken when it becomes a chicken… meh, I write this far and find I still agree with you: even in that case the egg it hatched from becomes a chicken egg by virtue of the chicken it grew into.
Hatch or grow. Because once you’re asking those questions, is the first chick truly the first chicken?
“Is a juvenile defined by what it currently is or what it will/might become?” And, “is chicken-ness an innate quality of the animal, or in relation to the animal fulfilling/presenting (or being able to fulfil) some chicken-ness?”
The thing that defines chicken-ness is crossing the road. So if the egg rolled across the road before hatching does that mean the egg is a chicken egg?
But of course the chicken must also see the other side of the road. Since it’s impossible for see outside of the egg before hatching it might be the egg lacks sufficient chicken-ness to be considered a chicken egg.
But once the egg hatches the chicken will see the other side of the road. So if the egg crosses the road and the chicken that hatches from the egg sees the other side of the road, both the egg and chicken must both be considered to be sufficiently chickenly to complete the sequence required to establish the complete chicken.
I have no direct knowledge about that, but if we take the analogy of the egg (shell, albumen and yolk sack) being the life-support system of the embryo during gestation, in humans the placenta would be a big part of that, and exactly whose body it is part of its not simple (from what I remember both mother and child contribute cells, and the ‘plan’ for building it comes from the father’s genes). So maybe for chickens it could be ambiguous whether the shell ‘belongs’ to the laying generation or the hatching one. Seems like mostly a human taxonomy distinction to make anyway, obviously it’s in between the two, but we like to draw the line somewhere.
I recall reading somewhere that it would have been a proto- chicken kind of thing. Like not quite a chicken but it laid an egg and the first chicken came out.
Even that’s not that clear cut. The mutants and the nonmutant proto chickens interbred regularly and different mutants showed up and also interbred. The real answer is there’s no platonic ideal chicken but we really want to categorize this thing.
Edit: I guess the platonic ideal chicken is a man according to diogenes.
The snake and lizard branch is wrong. I care very much about the accuracy of memes, and I have to point out that many lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards.
They know, but the person they originally responded to is making a faulty inference in the form of “pigs = mammals, mammals emerged at X date, pigs emerged at X date”. They aren’t properly recognizing that eggs are a distinct subset of unicellular organism (which I also think isn’t actually true of fertilized eggs) and you can’t infer from the set “unicellular organisms” having a trait that “eggs” has the same trait.
It would technically be wrong because the dates would have no appropriate scale. The difference between each node could be wildly different and also irrelevant to the solution space this virtual representation is trying to convey. Egg before chicken, check
If you actually wanted a phylogenetic tree to scale you would end up with a huuuge tree that has many more branches because it obviously is not as simple as depicted above. Take birds for example: There are all the dinosaurs in between that weren’t birds but have their own branches. It has actually been a tough question where to draw the line between dinosaurs and birds (there is a whole article on wiki). And if you have any paraphyletic groups in your tree it gets even messier! If you are already displaying other groups at the subfamily level, you should then display all groups at this level.
All this is to say that the level of detail contained in a phylogenetic tree (or any graph for that matter) is highly dependent on the information you want to convey. Ideally you should draw it as detailed as necessary and as simplified as possible. In this case, we get all the information that is necessary but are not overwhelmed with facts that if you draw Squamata (lizards and snakes), you would also have to draw Rhynchocephalia (monotypic order) in.
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