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Chicken and Egg Problem Solved
Java Pimp writes "It seems scientists and philosophers now agree which came first. The Egg. From the CNN article: 'Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life. Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg. Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, told the UK Press Association the pecking order was clear.' So, does this mean we can now show P=NP?"
I solved that question in a paper for a philosophy class years ago...
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Complete details of why the chicken crossed the road... ba dum bum
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Which came first, the Scientist or the Philosopher?
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Only for P = 0 or N = 1.
So when did the nuggets and fingers come into play?
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Something that was almost a chicken laid an egg that hatched into a chicken. So, the egg had to have been first.
So what it comes down to is prehistoric man decided not to make an omelette out of the first egg, and now we have chickens?
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
So the chicken and the egg are laying in bed together. The egg's smoking a cigarette. The chicken says, "Well, I guess we know the answer to THAT question!"
They are basing their argument on a flawed assumption. They assume that the first chicken would have had to come from an egg because its genetic material says that it grows from an egg. It is entirely possible that the first chicken was born of a non-egg and of course without changing its genetic makeup, laid the first egg. There are examples of animals with multiple reproductive paths to the same result. Think of hydras, jellyfish, yeasts, fungi, aphids, slime molds and sea anemones to name a few.
I still believe that the first chicken was actually born of the very last chicken egg in existence, transported back in time by his noodly appendage.
So, what does a mobius chicken taste like?
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
I came to that realization when I was about 9.
Like any good theory we need evidence. So who is the unlucky sod going back in time to check the info? ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Which is better, fried or scrambled?
Everyone knows the egg comes first... you can't make scrambled eggs without breaking the egg. You would think an egghead philosopher would think of something better to think about.
"The debate, which may come as a relief to those with argumentative relatives, was organized by Disney to promote the release of the film "Chicken Little" on DVD."
I smell a conflict of interest. Since this study was obviously tainted, the chicken MUST have come first.
Q: Which came first; the chicken or the egg?
A: The Rooster.
...don't fish eggs predate chickens by a few million years?
Thanks for ruining my dissertation, you jerks!
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Which came first the chicken or the egg? Why the pteradactachickendyl of course.
This
then you'll realize that reasoning was always obvious, however, you can't answer the question THAT certainly, since what one calls "chicken egg" also includes the actual egg, not only the contents.
Maybe the first chicken was born from a pink egg, who knows.
but really; how can they ever know, because evolution is so slow that you couldn't say that one generation was not a chicken and the next generation was... there will have been millions of years of blur...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
"The debate, which may come as a relief to those with argumentative relatives, was organized by Disney to promote the release of the film "Chicken Little" on DVD"
Hmmmmm. Betty. The cat did a whoopsee on the philosophy question.
Wow, no shit. It took them this long to figure it out?
I always thought this was a question of science vs. religion... If the egg came first, then clearly the chicken came from evolution (an animal like a chicken laid an egg that then became a chicken). However, if the chicken came first (scientifically impossible) then it was because made the chicken suddenly appear on the planet. So just wait for the ID people to refute this claim...
Read my blog posts on usability.
Like frog's legs.
illegitimii non ingravare
This is the answer I've been giving to the logic exercise since I was a wee 'lil tot... please tell me they're joking about just figuring it out now.
The chicken was created on the fifth day you heathens!
This is true, but only if you assume that the egg refers to any egg - if it's a chicken egg, then the chicken must have come first as only chickens can lay chicken eggs.
Apparently, crap came first, the argument is plain stupid.
The egg clearly came first since chickens evolved from species already laying eggs.
If you ask if a specific chicken came before a specific chicken-egg, then probably yes, depending on the time of the laying/conception/[your preferred existance-deciding moment].
If you ask if a specific chicken came before it's own egg, then obvously, no, which is well-established by the laws of causality.
But, that those aside, in the more transcendal (and usual) interpretation the question doesn't make sense since development of a species is continuous and the whole concept of species is trying to break that continuous development into discrete steps. That process is bound to have boundary problems and the system of species should not be applied in those conditions.
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
Q: Chicken or egg comes first?
A: On the same plate please. May I have some tea as well?
Did anyone honestly think the chicken came first?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
See the Egg was on its back panting and next to the egg there was a chicken looking pissed. The Chicken rolls onto its side muttering "well that answers that question".
The debate, which may come as a relief to those with argumentative relatives, was organized by Disney to promote the release of the film "Chicken Little" on DVD.
So CNN and Slashdot are happily giving free advertising to The Mouse these days?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Of course the easy answer to the question is that the egg came before the chicken, because sea animals were laying eggs before anybody had legs.
Scientists confirm nails can be driven into place by hammers, Philosophers still unsure if nails feel pain.
EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
I recently finished reading the Ancestor's Tale, which I found to be an awesome book, minus the occasional Sagan-esque polictical ramblings. Just thinking in terms of how he presented evolution through incremental change and subsequent survival, I wonder if its possible that maybe the first "chickens" did not hatch in "eggs" at all. Maybe (sorry for lack of technical terms here), the material in which the animal was born (live, not incubated in an egg), over time, developed into a harder material. As time moved forward, the placental material merged into this area as well. One thing leads to another and basically it became an independant birthing(?) unit. Similar to the who created God paradox, the egg did not just magically exist, it was created through circumstantial events that luckily enough managed to survive to become the defacto method of chick delivery.
I had an argument with my friends the other day, mainly about how species differentiate. If a person becomes a different species, they can't mate with the other persons in the population, since that's the definition of a different species.
My question is, do generations become new species (or lose their reproductive ability with members of the previous species) at once, or gradually over long periods of time? Because at some point that has to happen, and I can't imagine it happening gradually, they either can mate or they can't.
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The chicken is smoking a cigarette.
If a chicken that wasn't born out of an egg is considered a chicken, then the chicken came first. One of those chickens eventually hatched an egg.
If a chicken that wasn't born out of an egg is not considered a chicken... then only the first egg it produces is a chicken. Then the egg came first.
It's just semantics...
The underlining assumption implicit to their arguement is evolution is an actual phenomenon responsible for the creation of new species. But, a creationist would still argue that the "Creator" wave his (her?) hand and created the chicken. The chicken then laid the egg. I am more convince by the former but for many the question is still in dispute.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Wow, man...this must be a -really- slow news day.
Unpleasantries.
the source code or the editor?
"Chicken and Egg Problem Solved: It seems scientists and philosophers now agree which came first. The Egg."
Slow news day, huh? :)
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... fifteen years ago - when I was eight!
Obviously I didn't use fancy words like genetic material, but I had the basic idea!
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The rooster.
The chicken comes second, or not at all.
his hypothesis, if correct, is still backwards. since the genetic material can't change after birth, then the first chicken was born that was going to lay the first egg. it possessed the genes to lay the egg at birth, then layed it.
egg first? no way! eggs only contain half the chromosomes require for life. males must provide the other half. I'd argue this guy just proved Evolution false!
What do you mean?
75 comments and no references to GEB and self-referentiality? What gives?
The question presupposes that at a certain point there existed something that was suddenly entirely a chicken. We know this to be false. One feature at a time, one generation at a time, lizards gradually became more and more chicken. Both Taoism and evolution contribute to better understanding this question. From Taoism, understand that categories and names are arbitrary and inherently inaccurate. From evolution understand that chickens have gradually shaded into being over millions of years. From this, understand that within the span of one generation, there was no single change that gave the label chicken sudden meaning. The name chicken does not have meaning when distinguishing between two adjacent generations of things with chicken characteristics. It is like using a magnifying glass to look at an atom. The name "chicken" is inappropriate for single generation distinctions, and lacks usable meaning. Similarly, it is likely that eggs came into existence in a single generation, and so egg lacks meaning. Since both egg and chicken lack the semantic power to distinguish generations, the question is wrong as it is intended.
Of course, if you want to interpret the question not as it was meant, then you can say that lizards and their eggs came before chickens and their eggs, therefor eggs came millions of years before chickens.
Two days ago I was driving for a few hours in my car and started thinking about this and came to the same conclusion.
I knew they were onto me.... *puts tinfoil hat back on*
P = ~P
For those who haven't had any Philosphy classes relating to logic... P equals NOT P.
When they prove that, we'll I'm building myself a perpetual motion machine.
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Strangely, I posited this to my friends over beer years ago, but I didn't think it was really that difficult a problem.
;)
I was assuming the egg in question is a "chicken egg", not any other kind of egg. (Eggs in general predate chickens by millions of years.) I also assumed that by definition, a "chicken egg" meant "an egg laid by a chicken", not merely "an egg surrounding a chicken". The conclusion is somewhat obvious, and I don't see why this is news.
I never thought this was a real question which people actually even considered debating. The answer was always clear and straight-forward depending on whether you favored evolution or creation as the source of life. If you favored the idea that God created the whole world and its inhabitants as adults you obviously thought the chicken came first. If you favored the Darwinian evolution, then you state that it was the egg and that the chicken came from a pairing, mutation, or other accident of birth in an evolutionary manner. Beyond using this to summarize (and probably short-circuit) debates on evolution vs. creation, I don't think the question would have made it into popular culture.
A similar question was "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (to my understanding) wasn't really about angel-packing theory but was a question about whether you believed that there was a spiritual world coexisting with ours or whether spritual ideas came strictly from men and inhabitants of this world. If you believed in a parallel spiritual world the answer was infinite angles. If you thought that angels were butterflies or people or something with mass then the answer was non-infinite. There wasn't any real debate (do hallucinations of angels count?) but it was another question that simply summarized a particular stance of ideas.
All that comes to mind right now is that horrible song on Sesame Street or the Electric Company or something where they show chickens and eggs and chickens hatching from eggs and a country singer fiddling away singing "Which came first the Chicken or the Egg? The chicken or the Egg? The Chicken or the Egg? Which came first the Chicken or the Egg?" ad smeging infinitum. Grrr. There's going to be an infinite number of angels hunting down whoever posted this and reawakened that memory for me.
The egg came first, because breakfast comes before dinner.
"R-squared"
PS - Why don't eggs don't taste like chicken?
The chicken sprung perfectly formed from the rib of the first turkey.
What? If people are stupid enough to buy it when discussing humans, why should birds be any different...
A designed process I'm quite fond of
I could have told you that this is how the theory of evolution would suggest things when I was in high school. Problem is that I believe God created the world, and I'm not convinced that He did so using evolution. Thus I'm inclined to believe it was a chicken first.
Clearly this is just further "christian science" meddling to try to get us to believe an individual is born at conception.
No matter how much of a mutant freak they really are.
Identify mutants. For your protection.
Chickens came from plants. We all know that plants have demonstrated the amazing ability to undergo genetic changes in response to stressful factors within the environment. It's clear to me that one such plant evolved instantaneously into what we now call chicken. So did many other animals; that's why everything tastes like chicken.
First was the Easter bunny.
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This, like problems in people's understanding of evolution, is from our (human's) tendencies to think discretely. We like discrete groupings and classifications. But obviously there wasn't a single generation where we can say the parent wasn't a chicken but the offspring was. THese changes are gradual, and any attempt to put some hard division between chicken and nonchicken like that would be making some arbitrary division point.
...this couldn't be known until the egg hatched...and you have a chicken.
+&x
If you mean "the chicken or any kind of egg", the answer is any kind of egg. Obviously, dinosaurs had eggs before chickens existed.
If you mean "the chicken or the chicken's egg", the answer is the chicken. Only a chicken can lay a chicken's egg.
If you mean "the chicken or the egg containing a chicken", then the answer is the egg, because as the article points out the first chicken had to exist in an egg before it laid eggs of its own.
So... what kind of egg?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Do scientists get paid to work these kinda tongue-in-cheek problems? Or do they work on these when they're bored and put them out for fun and a little publicity?
If P was NOT P and you built one, then you whould no longer have one... *confused*
FRA: STFU GTFO
The chicken came first - Eggs don't have sex organs (vital)...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
1) Do we eat chicken eggs? Their resolution of the argument seems based on the fact that the first genetic chicken was assembled as an egg before growing into a pecking, clucking creature capable of reproduction. But aren't the eggs that we eat unfertilized and unable to grow into chickens? If their definition of "chicken egg" is that which can grow into a chicken, then we apparently eat omelet eggs, cake eggs, and key lime pie eggs.
2) What was the first entity in the adult/egg cycle? Before the first chicken egg, there were ever-so-chickenlike adults with mutated strands of DNA in their unfertilized egg or sperm. It's hard to say that their offspring was 100% chicken while they were 0% chicken. So chickeness gradually evolved from the first entity capable of adult/egg reproduction, and that entity was certainly not very chickenlike at all. But it did start the cycle rolling. Since the creatures before this entity did not lay eggs, I posit that the egg-laying gene mutated within an adult creature. Therefore the chicken, metaphorically, came first.
3) I always read Slashdot comments nested.
AlpineR
This "science" flys in the face of what millions know to be absolute pure fact and you are abashing our faith in the unseen as a consequence!
It states clearly in the book of Ragu chapter 16:20 that eggs were concieved by the Him for the purpose of making omlettes, that the lives of all pirates might be more delicious, especially at breakfast.
Chickens were created as an after-thought to automate the egg making process because He got tired of making all the eggs by using His own noodley-appendages.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your college paper doesn't pre-date Cecil Adams, who published the same answer in 1984: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I assumed that the first chicken would have originated as an egg of a creature that was very similar, but not quite a chicken.
Apparently, the eggheads agree.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
So is this guy any relation to one miss Anne Elk?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
erm, I kinda dissagree.
The thing that evolved into a chicken was born by some method other than egg, but it was born with the
mutation that made it produce eggs, so in fact, the non-egg-producing chicken came first, then by some
non-egg means came the mutated egg-producing chicken, then came the first egg.
By their own argument, their argument doesn't make sens.
The chicken came first of course, since evolution is a false science with no proof, and God created the universe and everything in it (chickens too), the chicken came first.
The question was never about genetic material, and there is no answer. It's meant to be a question of semantics: what do we mean by a chicken and what do we mean by a chicken egg?
Clearly a chicken egg is an egg layed by a chicken, so the chicken had to come first. But just as clearly, a chicken is just what it says: a chicken. So a chicken born from any egg is still a chicken, and the egg came before it. So the egg came first. And while an egg that hatches a chicken is clearly a chicken egg... well you take it from there: how many ways can you think of to define each so that it's first?
The point isn't to have an answer, it's to ask questions about the nature of things. So bravo to everyone invoved in TFA, because they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
So how could he have created chickens if he wasnt hatched first.
All these questions are easily answered in the bible.
Please hurry ! Give me the proof (send a mail privately please) ! I have failed my computability exam :/ now if I know the proof that P != NP I won't have to study that course anymore and I'll be on holyday. Thanks.
Ummm... no offense guys, but I see all these posts full of "Well DUH!" responses. You should be looking for holes in this, not immediately declaring your support. Isn't scientific progress made by disagreeing with theories and looking for mistakes in them?
And you wonder why creationists call evolution faith.
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A chicken is an egg's way of producing more eggs.
Thanks for lying that one to rest.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Yes.
Well, thank god that for the once, the answer isn't "me"...
This guy's the limit!
That's the Intelligent Design answer and it does not seem to be contradictory, at least from this vantage point. Nor does it lead to an infinite regress. IOW, what came first, the processor or the registers? the yin or the yang? It's all indivisible.
Why, the rooster, of course.
yeah, but ... is that why geek guys don't have girl friends? Because they try to woo with
Lie, lady, lie, lie across my big brass bed
(she is looking at you funny)
Lay yourself, lady, lay yourself, lay yourself across my big brass bed
(she is already headed out the door)
All sigs should be as funny as possible, but no funnier.
Is the egg the chickens way of making more chickens, or is the chicken the eggs way of making more eggs?
It doesn't matter. In your formulation of the problem, for whatever definition of egg, the egg producer came first, for the same reason given by OP--but the subtle alteration of the wording reverses the meaning of the problem. Something hatched from something that was not-quite-an-egg, and laid an egg. Therefore, the producer of the egg came first in that formulation.
It does not in any way depend on your definition of chickens or eggs, it simply depends on the wording. If you specify "chicken" as the goal feature, the egg came first. If you specify "egg" as the goal feature, the egg-layer came first.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your college paper doesn't pre-date Cecil Adams, who published the same answer in 1984: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Cecil Adams' response was only correct for one interpretation of the question. That interpretation is a question of whether eggs of any sort existed before chickens of any sort. His interpretation is only useful if you intend to be a smart-ass by answering the letter of the question rather than the common interpretation. The more common interpretation of this question is whether chicken eggs existed before chickens themselves. That is the question that TFA seeks to answer.
BTW, I also answered this question years ago (though not before '84). All it got me was dumb stares from the people I told it to. Now that my answer has been "officially confirmed" I expect nothing but head scratching and comments like, "I don't remember you saying anything like that at all."
The answer is actaully quite obvious from an evolutionary perspective. If evolution happens between generations, then what came before the first chicken egg had to be a non-chicken. Thus the egg came first.
TW
If their logic is correct then it doesn't matter at what point the label "chicken" could be applied, what was contained the egg still must have been a "chicken".
But then again... I probably don't know you.
Of Code And Men
News for poultry. Stuff that hatches.
-William Brendel
Okay just so everyone is clear, we've had the answer for years, its in the bible right here in Genesis 1:20. And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." He said *birds* not eggs... problem solved!!!
Of course the book says bats were fowls... oh, and I'm an atheist... hum... guess the point goes to the egg!
That's it? That's the answer to the final debate? The egg came first because chicken's come from eggs? Next month the cutting edge research might reverse this one when it's discovered that eggs actually come from chickens!
or else!
Was the parent of the first so-called egg born without anything resembling an egg? Highly unlikely, since natural selection is more gradual. More likely the egg of each child differs only slightly, only microscopically from the "egg" of the parent. With each generation some slight variation may occur and some of those (stronger shell, more food inside, etc.) may prove advantageous and will persist in following generations.
There is no way we would see one generation born without something very strongly resembling an egg and the next generation suddenly born with an egg. Instead the successive generations would produce an "egg" more and more suited to the environment. But our eyes could not distinguish any difference between successive generations of egg.
So to again paraphrase the President, it depends on what the meaning of the word 'egg' is.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
This is pretty stupid. Why did it take so long to decide this, because of religion or soemthing stupid? As an atheist, I can look at it logically without a God interfering. Obviously, there was a chicken like creature who laid an egg. The embryo in the egg had some genetic mutations or adaptations that made the chicken we have today. The egg hatched, and now we have the chicken. People are so dense, eh?
so now what comes first the dinosaur or the egg ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
I always thought the chicken came first because I understood the question as "What came first? The chicken or the [chicken] egg?" Anyway, I agree with TFA. Silly me.
Eggs were in existence long before there were "chicken" clucking around. What ever "bird" not a chicken that laid an egg the bore a chicken...laid an egg that was NOT a chicken egg. The Chicken that came from whatever egg that was not of a chicken, then in turn laid an egg that was a chicken egg. There for Egg cam before the chicken, chicken came after the egg, the chicken egg came after the chicken, and Mc Donalds Egg McMuffin came after the Chicken Egg...
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
Neither came first. They both came together: initial cells did not lay eggs, but they were duplicated: they cloned themselves.
The embryo in the egg was a chicken, but the egg is not entriely produced by the embryo, parts of it (such as the shell) are produced by the parent organism, so the putative first chicken embryo may not have been encased in a chicken egg.
to non-chickens, but still chicken-like, get it on and produce an offspring that is known as a chicken. You become a product of your parents.
Everyone knows eggs came first. Even if not the chicken egg, certainly other kinds. =) The story isn't about that. It's about scientists and philosophers actually agreeing on something! :O
So, assume that there was something that was the modern-day chicken, that hatched out from something that wasn't quite exactly an egg yet. Then that chicken grew up to lay what was now exactly a modern-day egg. Then the chicken would have come first because it hatched from something that wasn't an egg.
And now for something completely different...
Not A Sig
The more common interpretation of this question is whether chicken eggs existed before chickens themselves. That is the question that TFA seeks to answer.
:-)
We agree that the question is really concerned with chicken eggs, not eggs in general.
Therefore, a non-chicken layed a non-chicken egg containing a chicken embryo. The chicken came first, and the first chicken layed the first chicken egg after that.
The egg cannot come first, only the chicken can come, so obviously this is a trick question.
The Chicken came first, not the egg. How else did the egg get here? For the answer you must think back further than the chicken. At some point there was life on planet Earth. This life branched out into countless living beings. The chickens path was that of a chicken first, with no eggs. At some point the chicken grew more complex and started to lay eggs rather than divide into more cells. So you see the answer is somewhat of a trick questions, but we can all agree that the egg and the chicken are the same thing. However for the questions sake the chicken is first and egg last. I know this must be a shock to some people, but even the life of a simple tasty chicken is a complex being. Oh.. and Chicken Little movie bombed hardcore... those guys that edit the movie previews should make movies because they know what sells..lol OffTopic~ *Anyone here like RottenTomattoes? That site is fool of it! Better off going to IMDB for reviews.IMHO* Go see lucky number s7even or Xman3 today! :)
That problem was never that tricky to figure out, I realized that back in science in elementary school. It's kinda like "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" From a scientific standpoint, well of course it does! Sounds waves are sound waves regardless of whether or not someone is there to hear them. I guess its funny that people have confirmed this, but it doesn't take CNN to make people realize something as fundamental as this.
{ All P | P = NP when N = 1 }
QED
The Bible says that birds and animals were created on the fifth and sixth day. That would mean that the chicken was made before an egg came into existence. It's so sad that people disregard the Bible (special creation) and rely on theories like evolution. The Bible has been proven the most historically accurate book ever, while evolution is full of contradictory ideas which do not work out. It contradicts both the first and second law of thermodynamics, and much more which I will not go in to right now. Sure, it may seam fine now to not believe in God, but what do you think is on the other side after you die? You are dead a lot longer than you are alive. Are you 100% sure where you are going? Jesus came down to earth as the ultimate sacrifice. All you need to do to be assured you will go to heaven is believe what God did for you (sent Jesus to die for our sins), ask for forgiveness and repent (choose to turn around and follow God). No matter how many or how big of a sin you did, it can be forgiven without you having to "make up for it." So next time someone asks you which came first, the chicken or the egg, I pray that you proudly say "The chicken did" and tell them why.
Buffalo wings
This must be really bad PR for the collective group referred to as scientists, if this was believed to be a big mystery. Why? Because it should be so obvious!
For life to form, as it is defined today (genetic information, metabolism, mutation), there must be a stable environment where it may develop. It must be shielded from the outside world! Think about the membrane surrounding the cell, think about the atmosphere surrounding this planet. Both the cell and this planet have a protective shield stable enough to permit the invisible machinery to do its thing. It's a basic hierarchical dependency!
The protective shell comes first. The genetic information changes depending on the environment. In this way, new forms of life are created from within an already stable environment, and if this next generation is sustained and duplicated with its accumulated information, the environment continues to constantly determine its outcome.
Eventually an organism will develop new ways to move around in its outside environment, but the information must be accumulated over time for the possibly giant leap from a cell membrane to a chicken-egg, and this can obviously only happen in a stable / constant environment sustained over time.
Not to pick nits, but ... here's a nit I'll pick (just a "pet peeve").
"Begging the question" doesn't mean "begs for the question to be asked." It's a fallacy in reasoning that means something like "assuming that which is to be proved in a premise from which the proof is derived." It can be more loosely used to mean "avoiding answering a question by a very verbose non-answer." There's a pretty good write-up in the wikipedia that can be found here.
Why is it called begging then? From the article:
Perhaps
But, if you assume we are talking about chicken eggs and chickens, then strictly speaking the chicken came first, ince the egg that was laid by the pre-chicken was not, in-fact, a chicken egg, but a pre-chicken egg.
If we allow for any species of egg then we have to allow for any species as well and we are left with the question:
Which came first the egg laying creatures or the eggs?
(And that assumes the creatures would have to lay the eggs.)
The whole point of this catchy little question is to capture the evolution vs. creationist view. Evolutionists say "egg" creationists say "chicken."
... your ignorance is showing.
Likewise for other "silly questions" such as "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" -- a catchy phrasing of the metephysical questions "Does heaven have a physical embodiment or is it purely non-physical?" or "If a tree falls in the woods..." which is a restatement of the dry sounding "Must one account for events outside the perception of humans?" (Hint - Scientists must answer this one "no".)
Take some philosphy classes folks
The only difference between a fertilized egg and an unfertilized egg is that the fertilized one if incubated will eventually produce a chick. The unfertilized will not.
If you come from a more rural background you will have seen the occasional egg on the breakfast table that was a bit to far along in its development.
Perhaps hen egg laying is just like human females who keep making producing eggs every month regardless of sexual contact. It is just that the hen unfertizled egg develops a lot further then a human unfertilized egg.
I only know for a fact from a semi farm upbringing that the only reason we eat unfertilized eggs is because that is easier to mass produce. Have you ever seen an egg farm? Not a place you want roosters around.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Utill now they come into this crap! , I can't bevlieve it. I came into that more then ten years ago when I was in high school (we had a philosophy subject) It's really curious how something that you think is really silly can bring fame to some people.
A chicken is just an eggs way of making another egg.
The fine article quotes Mr. Papineau as saying: "I would argue it is a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it. If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg."
So I'm not the one who chose that definition. The point of my post is that if you adopt that definition then most of what you will find in a grocery store are not chicken eggs. They do not contain chickens. The lack of fertilization makes quite a big difference to the contents of those shells biologically, if not chemically.
1) Germline cells exist within the body of an adult. If a transcription error or cosmic ray changes a sequence of DNA, it is within a germline cell that is part of an adult. I never said that a mutation in a somatic cell would produce a chicken.
2) Was the originator of egg-laying a multicellular organism? Perhaps the first organisms were single cells that reproduced by division into symmetric daughter cells. Then a mutation happened in one of those organisms that caused it to split asymmetrically into a larger portion and a smaller portion. We might consider the smaller portion to be an egg if it required time to grow before becoming capable of reproduction itself. Labels of somatic and germline are inappropriate before that stage of evolution.
Please use a little thought and open-mindedness before you tell me where to hop.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.autism/ browse_frm/thread/8de6e956291fc23d/a8d0d3249e07ec1 8?q=chicken+or+the+egg%3F&rnum=1#a8d0d3249e07ec18
I know that the paper I wrote in High School for biology my sophmore year ('79) would predate that.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
He said: "Eggs were around long before the first chicken arrived. Of course, they may not have been chicken eggs as we see them today, but they were eggs." OK, sure, but I've always taken the question to be, "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?" Otherwise it's obvious... He told PA people were mistaken if they argued that the mutant egg belonged to the "non-chicken" bird parents. "I would argue it is a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it," he said. Can't you just as easily argue that it's a chicken if it has a chicken egg in it? Is this simply about definitions? Who says that you could tell the first creature that mutated to lay that first egg from the first one to grow up inside an egg? And if you couldn't, this argues that the chicken came first.
It seems unlikely that an organism would find it evolutionary better to have a progressively harder skin for protection only to break out of it later whilst still young. It is much more likely the organism developed from one that budded offspring and the shell developed as a protection for the child to develop as the organism became more complicated and time increased between "birth" and autonomy of the offspring. Mammals went on to develop the child internally while birds laid eggs for offsrping to develop - an egg/a womb are different approaches to the same problem.
The idea that an organism developed a shell first is quite simply ridiculous.
Darwinists know its the egg, creationists know its the chicken!
Yes, we can eat fertilized eggs from chickens. In fact, the way to tell a fertilized egg from an unfertilized one is the presence of a white spot on the yolk. Most eggs in grocery stores are unfertilized.
But whether they are both "chicken eggs" depends on your definitions. If you say that a "chicken egg" is what's laid by a chicken, then they both satisfy the definition. But if you say that a "chicken egg" is what becomes a chicken, then the unfertilized one does not. The panel in the article settled the question through definition. You can call the contents of your carton "chicken eggs", but that is the opposite of their definition and will lead you to the opposite conclusion (the chicken came first).
Leave it to Disney to kill off one of the most prominent rhetorical questions of our time.... *sigh*
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
It is patently-obvious!
It has been since evolution was observed, Darwinistic or otherwise.
I suppose it might have been an interesting question before that, but not for what 200 years?
The answer is... WE PUNT.
This does not solve the chicken or the egg problem as I have always understood it. The question is where did the first Egg come from if there existed no egg laying creatures before it. Yet where did an egg laying creature come from if there were as yet no eggs?
The true boundary issue here is not the oh so close to chicken to chicken, it is the between a Species that produces off spring via Eggs and a species that does not.
The true (at least as I see it) spirit of the question is still quite valid.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Can an chicken even come? I know an egg likely can't, but avians don't have intercourse the same way mamals do... Can a chicken even HAVE an orgasm? /me ducks for cover...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Why does this "discovery" merit a Slashdot article? I figured this out in 9th grade biology class.
Signature.
How does this have to do anything with P=NP. Show me a turing machine that solves it
...was LAST month. This story is a little late, methinks.
What if the pre-chicken was exposed to some weird radioactive meteor and had its genes changed into that of our feathered friend? Who knows, it could happen. One in a gazillion chance.
And that really pissed the chicken off!
What if the first chicken hadn't hatched from an egg? It then laid eggs even though it didn't hatch from one.
The argument, which they didn't really explain well, is that there were non-chicken eggs before chickens, and that the animal that laid the egg that hatched the first chicken wasn't a chicken. But what if the first egg laying animal happened to BE a chicken?
Ok, I know that the chicken came after other egg layers, but the article didn't bother to mention this, leaving the actual argument given insufficient as proof.
That's just great, now everytime I sit down at my 3 egg omellete at IHOP I have to worry about the possibility of wiping out an entirely new species of chicken.
This means that the first chicken's parents were not chickens but only MOSTLY chickens. Unsurprisingly, they tasted like chicken.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
> However, if the chicken came first (scientifically impossible) then it was because made the chicken suddenly appear on the planet. So just wait for the ID people to refute this claim...
:-)
So... God could only make chickens, but not eggs?
Damn it. I'd bet my computer on that the chicken came first. Don't bet against me, just in case.
You've translated the question "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" to "Which came first, the egg producer or the egg?" Obviously the egg producer must come first.
But that's only ONE way to inerpret the question. You could also translate the question to "Which came first, the thing that hatches from the egg or the egg?" In that case, obviously the egg came first.
It all comes down to "What is a chicken?" is a chicken something that lays eggs, something that hatches from eggs, or both?
If you say a chicken is something that lays eggs, then the chicken came first. If you say that a chicken is something that hatches form an egg, then the egg came first. There is no single 'right' answer to the question because the question has two meanings depending on how you define the words.
paintball
Yes, as a fifth grader, I was telling people the chicken egg came first -- because all chickens hatched from chicken eggs, but the first chicken egg was not laid by a chicken.
I can't believe professors are getting paid to answer questions already definitively answered by a child.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
And how many millions did the taxpayer spend to come to this shocking conclusion?
The answer is actaully quite obvious from an evolutionary perspective. If evolution happens between generations, then what came before the first chicken egg had to be a non-chicken. Thus the egg came first.
As you say, this only applies to the evolutionary perspective. In the Intelligent Design scenario, the chicken came first.
Hmm... I wonder how the FSM fits into this...
... one of histories biggest problems solved!
What came first? The egg the chicken came in or the thing that laid it? Or it's egg? And so on to the first creature that either was or was an egg.
There is nothing to refute. The argument that the egg came first assumes that evolution is true. Arguing that evolution is true because the egg came first is circular reasoning.
Even if the chicken as we know it came in an egg first, it does nothing to prove or disprove anything. Now we have to consider the creature that came before the chicken.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
It don't matter. By your logic it should even matter wether the egg was female or male.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's always been obvious. There were eggs before there were chickens. They just weren't chicken eggs. (Up till a certain point.)
This is true whether you are an evolutionist, a creationist, or both (they are not really mutually exclusive.)
...in which the author argued that most of the "great philosophical questions" have been matters of fuzzy semantics. In this case, it's a problem of defining exactly what is meant by "chicken" and what is meant by "egg". Once you do that, the answer becomes obvious. Same with the tree falling making a sound, angels dancing on heads of pins, etc.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The other argument is equally as valid -- what if some genetic mutation in the zygote (egg or sperm) led to the development of (hard-shelled) eggs? This first 'chicken' may not have been from a hard-shelled egg at all; it could just have been the first to lay them.
Many monotheists today would definitely go with the "Poof! Chicken appears" line I know, but most of these people also listen to Pat Robertson and some of them like Celine Dion.
I thought I would give you a Muslim outlook on things, because due to the understanding of God in Islam, His omnipotence allows us to make braver postulations.
The evolutionary step from something-like-chicken to chicken-egg involves chromosomal mutation at some stage, the factors involved are presumed (by Darwinists) to be random in both number and nature. Muslim belief holds that God creates and subsequently causes all things. Biology is ruled by chemistry, chemistry is ruled by physics, and God puts down the rules of physics(speed of light..etc). Causality is thus governed by God throughout, and the processes involved in the becoming of the chicken are not based on mutation, but ancient, omnipotent design. That is, the "mutations" are purposeful, inevitable. Survival due to suitablility of conditions is similarly understood, in contrast to the conditions being coincidentally beneficial to the new mutant.
Obviously, if you don't believe in the first place, the reasoning above is immaterial. Please also note that the above is not postmodern neocon crap. God never told us *how* he created chickens, only that he created all things.
But you had to ask.
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg".
;-)
Very easy problem this: I worked it out first when I was about 14.
First, what are your definitions?
A chicken is something with various characteristics, blah, blah, not important. Egg is the important thing to define.
Now, if egg just means generic egg, then clearly eggs came first, as dinosaurs lay eggs.
If egg means "chicken egg", as we must presume it does as otherwise it is not much of a riddle, then we need to clarify this a little further. What do we mean by "chicken egg"?
If we mean "an egg laid by a chicken", then the chicken came first.
If we mean "an egg out of which a chicken hatches", then the egg came first.
If we mean "an egg laid by a chicken out of which a chicken hatches", then since laying happens before hatching, the chicken came first.
Oh, and if you beleive that God created heaven and earth, then it was the chicken, but don't feel worried if you thought it was the egg - it's all a big load of nonsense anyway, isn't it?
Easy peasy. Let's see, I did another one at the same time... why, when you drop toast, does it always land butter side down? The answer is that every time you drop a piece of toast it is exactly the same. The toast is more or less the same size, your plate is always at more or less the same height, the air density is always more or less the same, of course it's going to turn the same number of rotations every time you drop it.
Still no cure for cancer, though, I see.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Not necessarily true, in light of epigenetic inheritence.
If there is a Supreme Creator, then it would have to be that the chicken came first. However, if everything came into being by a massive series of accidents occurring just at the right moments in time, then it is very possible that the egg came first.
It's still a matter of semantics:
... do you consider a chicken egg to be an egg *laid* by a chicken, or an egg that *hatches* a chicken?
- Assuming that one means a "chicken egg" rather than a generic "egg"...
-
If two proto-chickens create an egg that brings forth the first true chicken-as-we-know-it, was the egg it came from a chicken egg? Or do you have to wait for your very first chicken to lay its own eggs before you consider them chicken eggs?
Depending on your definition on chicken egg, one can still explain it either way, and in both cases it's 'obvious' which of the two came first under your interpretation.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
> The answer is actaully quite obvious from an evolutionary perspective. If evolution happens between generations, then what came before the first chicken egg had to be a non-chicken. Thus the egg came first.
I wholeheartedly agree, *but*.
Some people might argue that an egg laid by a non-chicken isn't a chicken egg, thus saying that the chicken came first.
The problem is that the question is flawed. No matter how much scientific research you put in it, you can have two different answers. It goes something like this:
A: "What came first, the egg or the chicken?"
B: "Eggs, obviously- dinosaurs existed long before chickens"
A: "No, I mean a chicken egg"
B: "Define 'chicken egg'. Is a chicken egg an egg laid by a chicken or an egg from which a chicken is hatched?"
A1: "A chicken egg is an egg laid by a chicken"
B1: "In that case, chickens were first - because the first chicken wasn't hatched from a chicken egg. You *did* mean a chicken egg, right?"
A2: "A chicken egg is an egg from which a chicken is hatched"
B2: "In that case, the egg was first"
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Like, Holy Sh!t. I solved this problem 20 years ago while still in my teens. Why can't people just accept the FACT that that ALL life on earth originates from a single CELL. No observation will contradict that claim ever. Every observation will support it. Therefore the EGG must always come first regardless of life form. Cheers. Steve.
If it makes you feel any better... I remember you saying it.
But then again - *I* was the one who told you, so I said it first! So there!
The Egg coming before the Chicken makes sense if you think of the conception/gestation as a model of evolution itself. Simple cellular stuctures divide, combine, mutate, specialize and in time become more complex.
-Eric
Amazing that it took science to solve this I could have told them that years ago
~Dan
Does this mean we'll IPv6 real soon now?
Continuous positive slashdot karma since... uh, maybe next year.
The conclusion of that article is true only for an interpretation of the problem. In fact, everything depends on the definitions you give for "chicken" and (chicken) "egg".
If you use "animal which lays chicken eggs" and "egg laid by a chicken from which a chicken hatches" as definitions, you obtain that the chicken came first. This interpretation requires the animal to become a chicken through a mutation process while walking around earth.
The classic dilemma - the one that matters - uses as definitions "animal hatched from a chicken egg which lays chicken eggs" and "egg laid by a chicken from which a chicken hatches", which are recursive definitions.
The correct answer to it is "both, or none", because the dilemma is not about the objects, but their definitions. Both definitions requires the other to be defined already to make sense, and they indeed don't start making sense until both are defined. Anybody can verify that just by using Truth Tables.
Of course, nobody gives a damn about a philosopher solving a classic problem.
DrJones.
I've said this before for ages. The same thing with the "sound in the woods" question. Define your elements. Chickens come from Chicken Eggs = Eggs came first. All this has done is rigorously decide that the above definition is the correct.
With the wood in the forest, define a noise. The answer falls out from that,
So, the theory of Evolution as Origin of Species requires genetic mutation and survival of the fittest for one species to evolve into another. If this can't happen during an animal's lifetime, how can genetic mutations be passed to the next generation to make them "more fit"? While in the egg? To me, the only real trait that will help that is a shell that's a bit stronger than the rest but not so strong that the chick can't get out. I'm clearly missing something, and I'm sure one of my fellow Slashdotters will straighten me out.
Haiku's are easy
The best can touch you deeply.
Hippopotamus.
A chicken is capable of laying eggs.
So the chicken came first.
I wouldn't define a chicken by if it came outof an egg.
Instead i would wait for the animal until it bahaves a little bit grown up and then study it and after that try say what it really is. And when it lays eggs it is a chicken. So the first egg which was layed was layed by the chicken which was already there...
Did He create egg noodles?
Program Intellivision!
Well the question does not say "what came first the chicken or the chicken egg" so without all of the stupid pondering the question must be anwsered egg not because of genetics but because animals that laied eggs existed before any chicken evolved. --- I have not idea why we am participating in this argument, you would think the smartest population in the world would have something better to do.
So which came first, human embryo or the full grown adult? Male or Female?
Unless this is in the Journal of Irreproducible Results or the Annals of Improbable Research, then this doesn't belong in publication. Like another poster said, it's pretty straight-forward and has been answered many many times by individuals (myself included) via the mutation-into-chicken-embryo argument.
Funny, too, that this "breakthrough" is highlighted on a day when slashdot is carrying a story that while fourth-graders' science scores are elevated from 10 years ago, Americans' high-schoolers scores have decreased.
Chickiny thing gives birth to egg that dvelops into a real chicken. Poor chicken all alone in the world.
I ummh chickiny creature, I bet it tastes good.
except in the the trivial case that there were eggs of some sort before there were chickens of any sort. Ring species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species illustrate why.
The first bird that might have successfully bred with today's chickens--was a member of the same species, by the most common definition--could also have bred with other members of its population which could not have bred with today's chickens--birds of different species from today's chickens by the same definition. It just isn't the case that one day (or some place) there's this thing which is a member of a new species. With what would such a thing breed?
I believe this tensor to be valid, "All chickens come from eggs. Not all eggs come chickens."
Ahhh, but how long is a piece of string?
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
.....the question must be anwsered egg not because of genetics......
But it IS genetics at a much more basic level. DNA carries the instruction codes for all life, including the codes needed to make enzymes and proteins. However, it takes enzymes and proteins to make the DNA which carries the information codes that specify how to make enzymes and proteins. So what came first, the enzymes & proteins, or the DNA?
A computer contains the complete and total information how to construct a computer. How did the first computer get made and where did the information on how to make one come from? Of course, we all know that an outside intelligence constructed the first computer.
So why is it so far fetched to postulate that an external intelligence came up with the first DNA, complete with the instructions on how to construct enzymes and proteins, which then enabled the DNA to replicate from that point on? Why is it thought so outlandish, that an intelligent creator made the first chicken, complete with the ability to lay eggs which develop into more chickens? Evolution has no answer for this dilemma.
All theory is gray
There is a point at which biologists define a species as being a new species, it is the point at which two groups (of one ancestor) evolve to the point their genertic differences prohibit them from having fetile offspring if they were to attempt a mating between the two, think Horse + Donkey = Ass (Infertile), thus a Horse is not a Donkey and vice versa due to that fact although at some point they probably came from the same genetic ancestors in some way, something caused their gene pool to sperate.