4 ms·

> What came first, the chicken or the egg? This one does actually have a definitive answer! Evolutionary, there has to be an ancestor to the chicken that is n

by hooby 5y ago

> What came first, the chicken or the egg? This one does actually have a definitive answer! Evolutionary, there has to be an ancestor to the chicken that is not a chicken itself. It doesn't even matter where exactly you draw the line - it just has to exist. At some point in time, a genetic mutation occurred during fertilization, resulting in the very first chicken ever. Which of course started out as an egg. So there you have it - the very first chicken of all time started as an egg, laid by an animal that was not a chicken. Thus the egg came first.

lavela 5y ago
Unless of course you are someone who argues, that a fertilized ovum is already a new life. In that case you need to start to argue about what makes an egg an egg, as the fertilization happens while the rest of the egg is forming(or so I just read). So depending on your egg definition, there might be a brief period where there is a chicken which will become an egg and then becomes a chicken again.
- hooby 5y ago
  Elementary, my dear Watson. While the question seems to strongly imply that "chicken" is meant to refer to the hatched animal (which is also the most commonly accepted interpretation) - it does not spell that out. Thus it's not perfectly clear which interpretations may be used. Now, if we do allow alternate interpretations of the premise, then the egg still came first. Because dinosaurs laid eggs - and that was a long time before the first chicken ovum ever got fertilized. But if we disallow alternate interpretations and clarify that within the context of this question "chicken" has to refer to the hatched animal - then your answer is simply no longer valid. Well, let's ignore all that. Let's define our premise such, that: A) fertilized ovums ARE chickens B) fertilized ovums are NOT eggs and answer the question based on those assumptions. The first problem with your argument is, that it's impossible to find a logical, internally consistent definition of "chicken", that does INCLUDE the fertilized ovum, while at the same time EXCLUDING the egg. There's no way, the ovum is a chicken - stops being a chicken while an egg - and becomes a chicken again. Every definition that does include the fertilized ovum will also include the egg. So, based on our assumptions A) and B), we can deduce: C) eggs ARE chickens But if eggs are chickens, then the question "the egg OR the chicken" no longer makes any sense - and no correct answer can exist. Therefore, your provided answer cannot possibly be correct either. Thus, within this set of assumptions A) and B) - the question becomes meaningless, and can't be answered either way. P.S.: you are aware, that the "ovum" is more commonly called "egg cell"? ;)
chottocharaii 5y ago
Perhaps external egg laying evolved afterwards
- kevincox 5y ago
  Maybe, but I would argue that the animal that didn't externally lay eggs wasn't a chicken.
SamBam 5y ago
> resulting in the very first chicken ever. Which of course started out as an egg. No it didn't. It started out as a fertilized egg cell, or ovum, but that is different from an "egg," which is the vessel containing the zygote. See [1] This egg vessel -- yolk, albumen and shell -- was created entirely by the mother (i.e. unlike the fertilized ovum, it is not a result of fertilization by two parents, and contains no mutations which could make it a new species). So a chicken was once in an egg. The question is whether this egg, created entirely by the non-chicken mother, counts as a "chicken egg" or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg
- hooby 5y ago
  I think that to be able to properly answer a question, it is very important to first try and fully understand the question, and to know where it's coming from. If the egg IS a chicken, then the question "the chicken OR the egg" does not make much sense, does it? You can't chose "the egg" for an answer as that still would be the chicken (just inside a shell). Given that the question is ancient, as well as the fact that the question has been used to further philosophical debate about first cause, infinite regression and cause & effect, it seems pretty unlikely that - within the context of the question - "chicken" is meant to refer to the entire animal species including the ovum. It seems way more likely to me, that "chicken" is originally meant to refer to the adult animal, as in: ovum -> egg -> chick -> chicken Thus the argument that the chicken came first, because of the ovum (also known as "egg cell") - does not just misinterpret the premise that the question is built on - it kinda breaks the question, because basically it turns it into "What came first? The chicken or the chicken?" Of course the evolutionary answer does defy the purpose of the question as well - finding an answer was never the purpose - but at least it sticks with the meanings of "chicken egg" and "adult chicken", that are kinda implied in the question. The question treats the egg as NOT being a chicken. And thus by extension the ovum should not be treated as a chicken as well. It's of the species chicken of course - but it's not an adult chicken - which is the meaning of "chicken" used in the question.
  - SamBam 5y ago
    You may have misread my answer: I was not declaring that "egg" meant "ovum", I was saying that other people were. The "egg" per Wikipedia, is the vessel that contains the developing chick. In that regard, it's analogous to the uterus. Indeed, assuming we take "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" to mean "...or the chicken egg" (otherwise it's just a silly question, as dinosaurs had eggs), then we can make the analogy to "which came first, the human or the human uterus?" That should clearly be trivial to answer: the first organism that we could call a "human" must have started developing before her uterus did. So the human came before the human uterus. I'm saying that this is equivalent for a chicken egg. Since the "egg" is created 100% by the mother, albumen, yolk, shell and all, I'm saying it "belongs" to the mother, in the same way that a uterus belongs to a mammal mother. It's all her own cells. Therefore, the first "chicken egg" had to be the one laid by the first chicken. So it comes after the chicken.

by hooby 5y ago

lavela 5y ago

Unless of course you are someone who argues, that a fertilized ovum is already a new life. In that case you need to start to argue about what makes an egg an egg, as the fertilization happens while the rest of the egg is forming(or so I just read). So depending on your egg definition, there might be a brief period where there is a chicken which will become an egg and then becomes a chicken again.

hooby 5y ago
Elementary, my dear Watson. While the question seems to strongly imply that "chicken" is meant to refer to the hatched animal (which is also the most commonly accepted interpretation) - it does not spell that out. Thus it's not perfectly clear which interpretations may be used. Now, if we do allow alternate interpretations of the premise, then the egg still came first. Because dinosaurs laid eggs - and that was a long time before the first chicken ovum ever got fertilized. But if we disallow alternate interpretations and clarify that within the context of this question "chicken" has to refer to the hatched animal - then your answer is simply no longer valid. Well, let's ignore all that. Let's define our premise such, that: A) fertilized ovums ARE chickens B) fertilized ovums are NOT eggs and answer the question based on those assumptions. The first problem with your argument is, that it's impossible to find a logical, internally consistent definition of "chicken", that does INCLUDE the fertilized ovum, while at the same time EXCLUDING the egg. There's no way, the ovum is a chicken - stops being a chicken while an egg - and becomes a chicken again. Every definition that does include the fertilized ovum will also include the egg. So, based on our assumptions A) and B), we can deduce: C) eggs ARE chickens But if eggs are chickens, then the question "the egg OR the chicken" no longer makes any sense - and no correct answer can exist. Therefore, your provided answer cannot possibly be correct either. Thus, within this set of assumptions A) and B) - the question becomes meaningless, and can't be answered either way. P.S.: you are aware, that the "ovum" is more commonly called "egg cell"? ;)

chottocharaii 5y ago

Perhaps external egg laying evolved afterwards

kevincox 5y ago
Maybe, but I would argue that the animal that didn't externally lay eggs wasn't a chicken.

SamBam 5y ago

> resulting in the very first chicken ever. Which of course started out as an egg. No it didn't. It started out as a fertilized egg cell, or ovum, but that is different from an "egg," which is the vessel containing the zygote. See [1] This egg vessel -- yolk, albumen and shell -- was created entirely by the mother (i.e. unlike the fertilized ovum, it is not a result of fertilization by two parents, and contains no mutations which could make it a new species). So a chicken was once in an egg. The question is whether this egg, created entirely by the non-chicken mother, counts as a "chicken egg" or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg

hooby 5y ago
I think that to be able to properly answer a question, it is very important to first try and fully understand the question, and to know where it's coming from. If the egg IS a chicken, then the question "the chicken OR the egg" does not make much sense, does it? You can't chose "the egg" for an answer as that still would be the chicken (just inside a shell). Given that the question is ancient, as well as the fact that the question has been used to further philosophical debate about first cause, infinite regression and cause & effect, it seems pretty unlikely that - within the context of the question - "chicken" is meant to refer to the entire animal species including the ovum. It seems way more likely to me, that "chicken" is originally meant to refer to the adult animal, as in: ovum -> egg -> chick -> chicken Thus the argument that the chicken came first, because of the ovum (also known as "egg cell") - does not just misinterpret the premise that the question is built on - it kinda breaks the question, because basically it turns it into "What came first? The chicken or the chicken?" Of course the evolutionary answer does defy the purpose of the question as well - finding an answer was never the purpose - but at least it sticks with the meanings of "chicken egg" and "adult chicken", that are kinda implied in the question. The question treats the egg as NOT being a chicken. And thus by extension the ovum should not be treated as a chicken as well. It's of the species chicken of course - but it's not an adult chicken - which is the meaning of "chicken" used in the question.
- SamBam 5y ago
  You may have misread my answer: I was not declaring that "egg" meant "ovum", I was saying that other people were. The "egg" per Wikipedia, is the vessel that contains the developing chick. In that regard, it's analogous to the uterus. Indeed, assuming we take "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" to mean "...or the chicken egg" (otherwise it's just a silly question, as dinosaurs had eggs), then we can make the analogy to "which came first, the human or the human uterus?" That should clearly be trivial to answer: the first organism that we could call a "human" must have started developing before her uterus did. So the human came before the human uterus. I'm saying that this is equivalent for a chicken egg. Since the "egg" is created 100% by the mother, albumen, yolk, shell and all, I'm saying it "belongs" to the mother, in the same way that a uterus belongs to a mammal mother. It's all her own cells. Therefore, the first "chicken egg" had to be the one laid by the first chicken. So it comes after the chicken.