what came first ? - the chicken or the egg ?

[YZeKa]

What came first ?
The Chicken or the egg ?

[BluTGI]

Descartes would say neither, there is no chicken there is no egg.

[Magius]

I’m getting a shiver up my spine thinking what this thread will lead to, couldn’t we have just stuck with “does a tree make a sound when it falls, if there is no one there to hear it?” ? Since much of the same arguments will revolve around that? Furthermore, the ideas are already developed from many of the members here in the does a tree make a sound if no one hears it thread, so one only need to go in and have a read.

[joseph_jialiang]

That is very smart no matter who ask this question first. I am wondering of the purpose of this question since it doesn’t show any proven answer yet. If I really need to answer, I will say… I don’t know yet

[Pangloss]

Seeing that this question has not given any hint of whether it is posed in terms of time, or importance in the development of, I will happily proceed to give a definitive answer to the question: The egg.
If we consider the egg to be that surrounded by a shell (the question is referring to a chicken), then the fact the shell membranes development precedes that of the inner vitelline envelope, which acts as the womb surrounding the region in which the embryo will develop. The blastocyte is made up of material taken from the shell membrane, which forms the egg. Therefore it is the egg, recognisable from its shell, which comes before the chicken, which is hardly a chicken until it hatches, let alone when it’s a ball of rapidly dividing cells.

[Magius]

Alright, while your thinking about whether the egg or the chicken came first, wrap your mind around these…

Should crematoriums give discounts for burn victims?

If a mute kid swears does his mother wash his hands
with soap?

Whose cruel idea was it to put an “S” in the word
“Lisp”?

If someone with multiple personalities threatens
suicide … is it considered a hostage situation?

Is there another word for synonym?

Isn’t it scary that doctors call what they do “practice”?

What should you do if you see an endangered animal
eating an endangered plant?

If a parsley farmer is sued do they garnish his wages?

Would a wingless fly be called a walk?

Is a shelless turtle homeless or just naked?

Is it true that cannibals won’t eat clowns because they
taste funny?

Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

Do they use sterilized needles for lethal injections?

Why do they put Braille on the drive through bank
machines?

What’s your take?

[silver]

ACTUALLY THE EGG DID CAME FIRST! but for another reason. Well, according to a friend of mine anyway…

The egg came before the chicken, but only in the literal sense of the question. The nature of the question presents a paradox, but the wording makes it answerable.

All creatures we see presently are evolvations of different, ancient things. They evolved small changes at a time. When a “litter” if you will (for lack of a better word) of offspring were born, none were entirely identical to the parents, and some had differences in genetic structure, creating defects, or effects of a positive nature. If one was born with a negative defect, chances were that it died because of incapacity to escape predators, while the stronger and faster (possibly due to genetic evolving) survived, creating more offspring with that positive trait.
The chicken as we know it has evolved from another type of animal (what, i’m not entirely sure) and the first one born that would be classified as a chicken was born of parents that were not classified so. Ergo, the first chicken came from an egg of a non-chicken, and the egg came before the chicken.<<<<<

"does a tree make a sound when it falls, if there is no one there to hear it?" >>  my answer would have to be no.. it does not make a sound.

id be happy to explain if u need me to

[inward]

I guess it’s not important what came first… What matters is… What will be the last? It is easier to try to explain something that happened, than to try to forsee what will happen.

[Dibit]

silver, according to what you posted, the question should be stated as, “which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?”

as you pointed out, it makes sense to say that the egg came before the chicken, but the chicken came before the chicken egg.

[joseph_jialiang]

Neither the chicken nor the egg come first… as the first is the DNA, then the cell, then multicell, then the chicken, then the chicken lay egg.

[inward]

So it was the chicken. A-ha!

[silver]

Well that threw my scientific explanation an egg…

[silver]

good one joseph

[JP1 (JP)]

Hey, I’m still alive.

This was an explanation I offerred on a different website:

Birds evolved from reptiles, therefore reptiles started laying eggs before chickens existed. What we now know to be the chicken, therefore (and it depends on where we determine the chicken species to be distinct from its predecessors) must have been born in egg, as no chicken could have possibly existed without being born in a egg first (i.e. birds have never given birth to their offspring live, always from an egg, a characterisitc they inherited from their reptile ancestors).

But, then you ask, how did the egg get to be there without a chicken laying it? The answer is (relatively) simple. While it’s not quite this simple in reality, there was a point in the course of a single generation that the species “chicken” appeared. In other words, I’m assuming that one specimen arrived before all others in a solitary instance, then went on to pass on his/her genetic make-up on to his offspring. So, the important thing is to determine exactly at what point the chicken species seperated on the evolutionary tree from its ancestors.

Chickens, like all other living beings, have a certain genetic make up, distinct from all other species. So, the point at which the chicken became distinct from its evolutionary ancestors is the point at which this sole specimen, as I alluded to before, would be capable of breeding with what we now know to be a “chicken” (by reading its genetic make-up and what not). Now, chickens are presumably evolving at the moment (as Darwin’s theory state’s, all animals are transistional) so the point at which we can say that prehistoric chickens are capable of breeding with what we have as a modern definition of a “chicken” is changing all the time as the genetic makeup of the modern chicken becomes immessurably, but none the less, undeniably different.

So, as the point at which chickens became genetically distinct from their old species is where we can say that they are capable of breeding with modern chickens, we can say that there is one generation of chickens capable of doing this, whereas their predecessors could not. Similarly, out of this generation, we can assume that there was one chicken before all others capable of breeding with modern chickens. This single chicken undeniably came out of an egg, as no bird has ever given birth to offspring in any other fashion than by egg.

Thus, the first chicken was preceeded by his own egg, and the egg came before the chicken. The egg came from a bird of a similar genetic makeup to the first chicken, but was different in the fact that it would be incapable of breeding with modern chickens.

So the egg came before the chicken, that egg came from a chicken like bird, though not a bird that we could strictly call, by literal modern definitions, a chicken.

Originally posted by Rad_dj:

I can only find one flaw . You only ever mention one singular chicken(or predocessor) . Even though chickens are capable of laying eggs by themselves , it would take a second creature to fertilise the egg to create the conception.

Yes, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that the so called “one singular chicken” is still, by modern standards, a chicken. Who came from an egg.

While he by himself will not be able to pass on his genetic makeup in its entirety, in time, he will pass on his genes to his offspring, and the chicken race “evolves”.

I was, in the example i used, well aware that evolution takes place in communities of animals, not in the individuals themselves. But, at the same time, it is unreasonable to think that there would not have been one creature who qualified as a chicken by our modern definition (i.e. capable of breeding with what we now know to be the modern chicken) before others, and that he was then able to pass his genetic makeup onto others (and seeing as chickens have turned out as they have, seemingly he had qualities that prehistoric chickens found favourable, or, indeed, it was those qualities that allowed him to survive wherever the other chickens couldn’t. Either way, he obviously didn’t have any problems mating, and his genetic structure has been passed down the generations and been perfected into the modern chicken).

While the prehistoric chickens evolved as they did today out of either necessity or “vanity” as a group, at some point there would have been one chicken who would have come before all the others, who would have qualified as a chicken by simple virtue of the fact that he would be able (were he alive today) to breed with modern chickens and to produce an offspring capable of breeding with chickens. This chicken could only have come from an egg, be it a prehistoric chicken egg or not.

I don’t understand the exact mechanics of it all (I must find my old biology book) but, to cut a long story short, the egg came before the chicken.

Not sure how accurate that was, as it was slightly tongue in cheek, but I still think it’s plausible.

Any biologists in here who want to verify/reject anything I’ve said there?

[Polemarchus]

Hey JP,

Welcome back, it’s great to hear from you!

Michael

[inward]

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on it’s face and the egg is frowning and looking a tad put out. The egg mutters to no-one in particular “I guess we answered THAT question.”

[Clementine]

Why do they put Braille on the drive through bank
machines?

Is this for real? Do they really have that?

Life is so absurd…

Oh, and the burnt people one… was very mean

[Vincent]

Here is something I dug up on page 44…yea its that old. The question that has perplexed mankind.

The chicken and the egg represent cause and effect one is the product of the other and the other produces the first. Its an infinite question.

Sure you could say it evolved and evolved and so on but what came before , primordial ooze? before that and before that the argument goes on to the beginning of the universe. The chicken and the egg dont matter the question under all this is what began the universe. Was it always there? Or was it created?

There are some philosophers that use this as a proof of god but seperate him from the bible. They say if you follow in the past the procession of cause and effect you arrive at the beginning but what started it, what started this motion and they say god did but they also say thats all he did and he plays no other part. …But all that goes to the toilet when someone asks who created god and then they are answered by he was always there. THe argument is endless and I revived this old topic just for the hell of it.

[Future_Man]

when you ask who made the first cause, you are neccesarily excluding it from the question ‘well what caused it?’ because its the first one, that means nothing caused it.

its not neccesarily god, its something that exists outside of the space and time that we see because that which we see neccesarily has this linear time and therefore also a cause. people say god is this thing that came from outside the universe of time because there isnt any way to comprehend any kind of unintelligent process that exists outside of time and can create the universe because the actions that we see these unintelligent objects do require time to make sense of. a magical, decision making being doesnt neccesarily need time to do things in the way we understand them because hes magical. we dont like to say that unintelligent processes are magical and exist outside of time because that makes them better than us?

its not actually rational, but it seems like it would be a lot easier to be atheist if the explanation of the universe wrapped itself up nicely. the creation of the concept of time is an explosive wrench in the works of any explanation of the universe based on cause and effect; cause and effect is the only possible way that we can ever explain anything, except for the creation of cause and effect. the fact that humans can never explain the universe leads some to say that means that god must have done it. but it doesnt actually mean that, it simply means that something that we will never possibly comprehend or come into contact with while experiencing time is responsible.

and those kinds of magical, extra dimensional things existing in a realm we will never see as humans with radically different, if any, laws of physics, are extremely fascinating and must exist as the source of the universe. something must exist outside of time in order to be the creator of the universe, the question is whether or not it makes conscious decisions.

what does somebody famous think about this?

[Uniqor]

what does somebody famous think about this?

He thinks that there is no causa prima, but only infinitus, eternally recuring infinitus. So basically, it’s infinity left-right and infinity up-down, that infinity is all around, in all ranks, in all objects, subjects and in itself.