which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer 1

At my house the egg comes first with bacon and toast. The chicken comes second for supper with potatoes and gravy.

The egg came first.

Answer 2

The chicken or the egg is a reference to the causality dilemma which arises from the expression "which came first, the chicken or the egg?". When used in reference to difficult problems, a chicken and egg problem is similar to a Catch 22 situation where something cannot happen until a second thing does, and the second thing cannot happen until the first does. For example, a person might have trouble finding a job without work experience, but to get work experience he/she must get a job.

The earliest reference to the dilemma is found in Plutarch's Moralia, in the books titled "Table Talk," in a series of arguments based on questions posed in a symposium. Under the section entitled, "Whether the hen or the egg came first," the discussion is introduced in such a way as to suggest that the origin of the dilemma was even older:

"...the problem about the egg and the hen, which of them came first, was dragged into our talk, a difficult problem which gives investigators much trouble. And Sulla my comrade said that with a small problem, as with a tool, we were rocking loose a great and heavy one, that of the creation of the world..."

Various answers have been formulated in response to the question, many of them humourous.

Answer 3

The egg came first, because the animal that laid the egg was a resemblance of the chicken- so the chicken was an evolution of that animal, but was first in an egg. God could have made the ckicken-like animal- and then it could have evolved into a chicken- which came out of an egg from a chicken like animal. So the egg came first.

Answer 4

There has to be a chicken to lay an egg

Answer 5

If you're religious - the chicken

If you're not - something that was very nearly a chicken (like 99.9% chicken, 0.1% dinosaur-chicken-type-thing) laid an egg, and inside that egg was a 100% chicken.

Answer 6

It's a no-brainer. The chicken obviously came first. THe chicken was created by God.

Answer 7

The chicken.

Answer 8

chicken lays the egg, chickens first!

Answer 9

Since ALL living creatures were made by God, then obviously the chicken came first.

Answer 10

all sorts of critters laid eggs before there were chickens, and the first chicken hatched out of an egg laid by an almost-chicken