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?"

Comments

Way to feed the Corporate Machine

[Greyfox]

Did anyone happen to notice the last sentence of the article?

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?

Re:I thought this was obvious to everybody

[Vellmont]

Except for the fact that chickens are birds, and birds evolved from dinosaurs, and dinosaurs layed eggs.

Of course this is a literal interpretation of the phrase, and doesn't take into account the larger problem that it points to, that is "chicken and egg problems". The general question is more like "which came first, the egg, or the egg producer"? Ultimately I think the answer to this lies in the distinction we make between egg and not egg. When do you start calling something an egg? Does it have to have a hard outer shell like a chicken egg? Is a single cell that exchanges genetic information with another cell, then divides into a multi-celluar thing an egg?

In reality the hard distinctions we make between things is a helpfull abstraction, but it's not exactly "real". Definitions are used to convey meaning, but the only thing that's real is the physical world, not our words for it.