The whole chicken and egg thing. I know it's been beat to death but..........?

Question

What does the question really refer to? Is it the fertilazation/conception of any one bird? Or is it the evolutionary development of the birds?

This isn't a loaded question. I'm curious. That's all.

Hold on. I'm not asking the "chicken and egg" question. I'm asking about the origin and meaning OF the question. Hope this helps.

Let's keep the Bible out of this one kids. Unless you can find a passage the references the origin of the question, it doesn't relate at all. I'm not scolding. Okay. I am. Stay on point.

Answer 1

" To do is to be." - Descartes

" To be is to do." - Sartre

" Doo-be-doo-be-doo. " - Sinatra

(I think the chicken whistled Frank's tune as it crossed the road.)

Answer 2

Scientifically, the egg came first. If you go back millions of years on the evolutionary chain, the chicken would devolve to become an organism that would cease to be called a "chicken". However, it's egg would continue to satisfy the criteria of being an "egg".

But, of course, this question came under the section of "philosophy".

What is the chicken symbolistic of? The parent, the elder.

As for the egg? What's the symbolism? The child, the young.

Yet these two, the parent and child, may be opposites, but they merge, flow and are one and the same in the cycle of life.

Heraclitus, a philosopher who lived in approximately 540-480 BC, believed that there are opposites everywhere. For example,

*If we were never ill, we would not know what it was to be well
*If we never knew hunger, we would take no pleasure in being full
*If there were never any war, we would never appreciate peace
*If there were no winter, we would never see the spring

Yet he believed that these opposites forever came together, and were part of a greater whole. For example, winter and spring are part of the 4 seasons, which merge both of them.

The chicken and egg, then, would be part of the greater whole, Life.

Another good example would be the pheonix. After five hundred years the pheonix would rest and die in a giant flame. And from the ashes from that flame would rise a new, young pheonix.

Yet which came first? That can never be answered, because they are the very same pheonix, simply undergoing a major change.

There would be, then, no answer to this question, for "they are but one and the same."

Answer 3

It refers to evolution. Given the subtlety of genetic change from one generation to the next, it would be hard (and perhaps a bit arbitrary) to define at what exact point in the evolutionary chain came a bird we would call a chicken.

However, since genes change from one generation to the next, at some point you would get a bird that would be a chicken. It still had its same genetic code while it was still an embryo in an egg, so technically, it was the egg that came first. That egg would have been a mutant from the bird that laid it; the bird that laid the first chicken egg would still have been 99.999999999999999999999999999 percent chicken, much more closely related to its 100% chicken offspring than dogs are to wolves today.

One could also claim that the egg came first by using the smart-aleck line of reasoning: The question asked which came first, the chicken or the EGG. It did not ask which came first, the chicken or the CHICKEN EGG. Since eggs were around long before chickens ever evolved, then again, it was the egg that came first!

Answer 4

(1) The Answer:
If you believe the bible, then God created chickens, and eggs came afterwards. If you believe contemporary biology (namely evolution), then the egg came first (it came out of an "almost a chicken").

However, you are not asking "the chicken egg question". You want to know the origin of the question itself.

(2) The Question:
According to wikipedia: "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..."

It appears that the question is a very old one. Clearly the originators of this question felt that it was a conundrum, despite the fact that modern science has arrived at an unequicovable answer.

(3) My Opinion
The general use of this question is meant to illustrate that one cannot know which of two things came first, because the two things mutually depend on each other.

In actual practice, we never find a causal relationship where the two things under consideration are completely "dependant" on each other (in that one of them did actually come "first"). It may appear to be a conundrum because, in time, the two entities change. Eventually their true historical relationships are obscurred.

The mystery of which came first becomes lost in the sands of time.

Answer 5

Even as you can probably infer just from this very question itself:
any answer basd on, or implicating, the false notion of 'evolution' is spitting in the face of reality!!

The chicken came first, for Adam was created as a completed man ... likewise, Eve: a woman, and the philosophy borne in holy writ then goes on to say that Adam had dominion over every single thing upon the earth and even the earth itself.
Therefore, as holy writ also attests, when Adam fell, so did every creature along with him ... Yes; and the earth itself!

As God says that He is the same yesterday, today and forever, likewise, 1000s of years later:
When Man was desroyed in the flood and the Lord said He would start again, what Man caused befell the whole earth - it did not just befall himself. So, all animal life was destroyed with Man, save those few that were taken into the ark BY Man!

Hence, if Adam was created as an adult: Guess Wot!!

You're right:
The chicken came, unquestionably, before the egg!!

Answer 6

The Chicken came first.

God Created Chickens, People, Plants, etc. God did not create seeds and eggs. None of us could have survived if we began life without parents to take care of us. We are born helpless and cute. Adults take care of the babies so that they will grow up.

So now you know it. When someone asks, What came first the Chicken or the Egg? You can say without a doubt, The Chicken came first!

God Bless You, ;-)

Answer 7

Its a conundrum about what came first, the chicken or the egg? If it was the egg, how did it come into being without any chickens to lay it? and if the chicken came first, what was it born from?

Quite probably the whole argument is a red herring, but it is one of those philosophical quandaries.

Answer 8

Its a statement of mans misunderstaning of evolution. Both the egg and the chicken evolved from lower forms. Shell for eggs became necessary after a time in the chickens evolution. In a way the answer is neither or both. Which came first the chickend orthe egg?
The answer is "YES"

Answer 9

Think of it as a koan. It directs your thoughts toward origins, and the cyclical nature of being. The answer is not important.

Answer 10

The chicken.