Chicken and Egg Syndrome

UberLord · Sep 25, 2002, 09:26 AM

So which came first then? The chicken or the egg?

THE EGG CAME BEFORE THE CHICKEN

Vagueness theorists tend to think that evolutionary theory dissolves the riddle "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". After all, 'chicken' is vague. The idea is that Charles Darwin demonstrated that the chicken was preceded by borderline chickens and so it is simply indeterminate as to where the pre-chickens end and the chickens begin.

However, this line of reasoning only dissolves 'Which bird was the first chicken?'. Rather than implying that the chicken-and-egg question lacks a definite answer, contemporary evolutionary theory favors the egg. Given Mendel's theory of inheritance, the transition to chickenhood can only take place between an egg-layer and its egg. For a particular organism cannot change its species membership during its lifetime. It is genetically fixed. However, evolutionary theory assures us that organisms can fail to breed true. So although it is indeterminate as to which particular egg was the first chicken egg, we can know that whichever egg that may be, it precedes the first chicken -- whichever that may be. The egg's precedence is a biological rather than a logical necessity. Given Lamarck's theory of acquired traits, the chicken could have come first.

One might object that there can be no first F if the onset of F-ness is indeterminate. But consider a son who gradually grows bald in just the pattern that his father balded. The father became bald before the son even though there was no clear first stage of baldness. Here's a closer analogy. A sculptor works on a marble block only during the mornings. There is no definite first day on which the block became a statue. However, we can say the block first became a statue during a morning.

Indeterminate states can be determinately related. One of the virtues of the chicken and egg question is that it reminds us of this internal structure. The riddle also shows that there is hidden determinacy to complement the more common theme of hidden indeterminacy.

THE CHICKEN CAME BEFORE THE EGG

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The answer is simple: the chicken. If you accept the theory of evolution as being at least approximately correct, then at some point of time an animal which was not a chicken (an archeopterchick?) laid an egg from which a chicken hatched. The world's first chicken matured and eventually laid the world's first chicken egg. If you accept the theory of creationism as being true, recognize that if God had created the egg first, an untended egg will not hatch so He must have created the chicken first to care for its future offspring. In either case, the chicken came first.

HUMOUR

merry · Sep 26, 2002, 08:22 AM

In the last few years many new sites have been discovered with dinosaur eggs and our knowledge about dinosaur eggs and nesting is exploding. Researchers are learning much more about dinosaurs through the study of these eggs especially in terms of what they have gleaned from new embryonic dinosaurs that have been found in some of the eggs.

... so it was the egg, after all.

Further reading:

DINOSAUR EGGS

THE EGG CAME BEFORE THE CHICKEN

THE CHICKEN CAME BEFORE THE EGG