Friday, August 12, 2005

The Chicken and the Egg Dilemma


The question, which of the two was there first

Nowadays we know that chickens, or eggs, for that matter, were not created by God, but that they are the product of a long evolution, difficult to solve. To begin with, we have to specify that we will be speaking about chickens and chicken's eggs, not about chickens and any kind of eggs, because in that case, the answer is trivial and uninteresting. This seems evident, but I mention it because of its importance further in my analogy

Let us call the animal which preceded chickens in the evolution of the species the Alpha chicken, or A-chicken for short.

One day a A-chicken must have laid an egg, out of which a modern chicken emerged. The arrival of this strange chicken has maybe happened on several occasions independently, and the first modern chicken might not be the ancestor of all our chickens, or it might even have died childless, but this is actually not important in my analogy.
The only factor of importance is, whether the egg out of which the first modern chicken was born, was a real chicken's egg. If this egg actually was a chicken's egg, then the Egg existed before the Chicken, if not, it can only have originated later.

Now we still have to define a chicken's egg. At first sight, there seem to be three possibilities: a chicken's egg is an egg laid by a chicken (we might call this the popular definition of a chicken's egg), or a chicken's egg is an egg out of which a chicken is born, or a chicken's egg is an egg laid by a chicken, out of which a chicken is born. In fact, only the first definition can be right, because also the eggs we eat, which most certainly do not contain chickens, are called chicken's eggs. And on top of that, if eggs were named after what they contained, there would also have to exist cock's eggs.

No, the genitive form can only refer to the maker, not to the inhabitant of the egg.
So history has taught us!!!! This is a Fact!

So, as the egg, out of which the first chicken emerged, cannot have been a chicken's egg, because it was laid by a A-chicken, and as i have clearly stated that the Egg in the Dilemma of the Chicken and the Egg can only have been meant as a chicken's egg.

Thus, my analogy concludes that the Egg came into existence after the Chicken.
Makes sense doesn't it?

(Inspired by my 7 year old niece who asked me this question)

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like this article thus far... It really gives a different perspective on the issue. I kinda like the Alpha Chicken analogy... BUT i'm still left unconvinced which came first.

9:23 PM  

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