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{{Short description|Philosophical paradox}}
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]'', 14th century]]
The '''chicken or the egg''' ] ] is commonly stated as the question, "which came first: the ] or the ]?" The dilemma stems from the observation that all chickens hatch from eggs and all chicken eggs are laid by chickens. "Chicken-and-egg" is a metaphoric adjective describing situations where it is not clear which of two events should be considered the ''cause'' and which should be considered the ''effect'', to express a scenario of ], or to express the difficulty of sequencing actions where each seems to depend on others being done first. ] posed the question as a philosophical matter in his essay "]", written in the 1st century CE.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Essays and Miscellanies, by Plutarch|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3052/3052-h/3052-h.htm|access-date=2020-07-07|website=]}}</ref><ref name="O'Brien">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KQNEBgAAQBAJ&q=chicken+and+the+egg+problem+Plutarch&pg=PA106|title=The Demiurge in Ancient Thought|last=O'Brien|first=Carl Séan|date=2015|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-07536-8|location=Cambridge, England|page=106}}</ref>


==Ancient legacy==
'''The chicken or the egg''' is a reference to the ] dilemma which arises from the expression "which came first, the ] or the ]?". When used in reference to difficult problems, a '''chicken and egg''' problem is similar to a ] 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 question represents an ancient folk paradox addressing the problem of origins and ].<ref name="paradox">{{cite book|last=Sorensen|first=Roy|title=A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind|url=https://archive.org/details/strategicinnovat00afua_285|url-access=limited|publisher=Oxford University Press|place=Oxford|year=2003|pages=–11|isbn=978-0-19-515903-5}}</ref> ], writing in the fourth century BCE, concluded that this was an infinite sequence, with no true origin.<ref name="paradox" /> Plutarch, writing four centuries later, specifically highlighted this question as bearing on a "great and weighty problem (whether the world had a beginning)".<ref name="Fabry">{{cite magazine
| title=Now You Know: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?
| url=https://time.com/4475048/which-came-first-chicken-egg/
| first=Merrill
| last=Fabry
| date=2016-09-21
| magazine=]
| access-date=2017-07-11}}</ref> In the fifth century CE, ] wrote that while the question seemed trivial, it "should be regarded as one of importance".<ref name="Fabry" />


By the end of the 16th century, the well-known question seemed to have been regarded as settled in the Christian world, based on the origin story of the ]. In describing the creation of animals, it allows for a first chicken that did not come from an egg. However, later ] philosophers began to question this solution.<ref name="Fabry" /> ] in the mid 17th-century published an erudite satire on the subject.<ref>, by Carlo Dati, Presse Settembre, Naples, 1840.</ref>
The earliest reference to the dilemma is found in ]'s '']'', in the books titled "Table Talk," in a series of arguments based on questions posed in a ]. 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:


==Scientific resolutions==
:"...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 ]..."
Although the question is typically used metaphorically, ] provides literal answers, made possible by the Darwinian principle that species ] over time, and thus that chickens had ancestors that were not chickens,<ref name="Fabry" /> similar to a view expressed by the Greek philosopher ] when addressing the paradox.<ref name="paradox" />


If the question refers to eggs in general, the egg came first. The first ] egg – that is, a hard-shelled egg that could be laid on land, rather than remaining in water like the eggs of fish or amphibians – appeared around 312 million years ago.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Benton|first1=Michael J.|last2=Donoghue|first2=Philip C. J.|date=2007-01-01|title=Paleontological Evidence to Date the Tree of Life|url=https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/24/1/26/1070944|journal=]|volume=24|issue=1|pages=26–53|doi=10.1093/molbev/msl150|issn=0737-4038|pmid=17047029|doi-access=free}}</ref> In contrast, chickens are domesticated descendants of ] and probably arose little more than eight thousand years ago, at most.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Miao|first1=Y-W|last2=Peng|first2=M-S|last3=Wu|first3=G-S|last4=Ouyang|first4=Y-N|last5=Yang|first5=Z-Y|last6=Yu|first6=N|last7=Liang|first7=J-P|last8=Pianchou|first8=G|last9=Beja-Pereira|first9=A|date=2012-12-05|title=Chicken domestication: an updated perspective based on mitochondrial genomes|journal=]|language=en|volume=110|issue=3|pages=277–282|doi=10.1038/hdy.2012.83|issn=1365-2540|pmc=3668654|pmid=23211792}}</ref>
Various answers have been formulated in response to the question, many of them ]ous.


If the question refers to ''chicken'' eggs specifically, the answer is still the egg, but the explanation is more complicated.<ref name=SOR>{{cite journal|first= Roy A. |last=Sorensen|title=The Egg came before the chicken|journal=Mind|volume=101|number=403|pages=541–542|year=1992|url=https://academic.oup.com/mind/article-abstract/101/403/541/947797?redirectedFrom=fulltext|doi=10.1093/mind/101.403.541}}</ref> The process by which the chicken arose through the interbreeding and domestication of multiple species of wild jungle fowl is poorly understood, and the point at which this evolving organism became a chicken is a somewhat arbitrary distinction. Whatever criteria one chooses, an animal nearly identical to the modern chicken (i.e., a ]-chicken) laid a fertilized egg that had DNA making it a modern chicken due to mutations in the mother's ovum, the father's sperm, or the fertilised ].<ref>{{cite web
According to a ], ] ] article, the egg came first, of which the answer follows the evolutionary chicken.
| title=Finally answered! Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
| url=https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/finally-answered-which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg
| first=Melissa
| last=Breyer
| date=2013-02-11
| website=]
| access-date=2017-07-11}}</ref><ref name="Fabry" /><ref name="Zushi">{{cite news|last=Zushi |first=Yo |publisher=NewStatesman.com |date=27 February 2017|title=Which came first: the chicken or the egg? |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/2017/which-came-first-chicken-or-egg}}</ref><ref name="NBCnews.com">{{cite news|publisher=NBCnews.com |date=14 July 2010|title=Which came first, the chicken or the egg? British scientists claim to have solved the mystery|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna38238685}}</ref>


It has been suggested that the actions of a ] found in modern chicken eggs may make the answer different.<ref name="Zushi" /><ref name="NBCnews.com"/> In the uterus, chickens produce ovocleidin-17 (OC-17), which causes the formation of the thickened ] shell around their eggs. Because OC-17 is expressed by the hen and not the egg, the bird in which the protein first arose, though having hatched from a non-reinforced egg, would then have laid the first egg having such a reinforced shell: the chicken would have preceded this first 'modern' chicken egg.<ref name="Zushi" /><ref name="NBCnews.com"/> However, the presence of OC-17 or a homolog in other species, such as turkeys<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mann|first1=Karlheinz|last2=Mann|first2=Matthias|title=The proteome of the calcified layer organic matrix of turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) eggshell|journal=Proteome Sci.|year=2013|volume=11|issue=1|page=40|doi=10.1186/1477-5956-11-40|pmid=23981693|pmc=3766105 |doi-access=free }}</ref> and finches<ref>{{cite journal|last=Mann|first=Karlheinz|title=The calcified eggshell matrix proteome of a songbird, the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata)|journal=Proteome Sci.|year=2015|volume=13|page=29|doi=10.1186/s12953-015-0086-1|pmc=4666066|pmid=26628892 |doi-access=free }}</ref> suggests that such eggshell-reinforcing proteins are common to all birds,<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Hincke|first1=Maxwell T.|last2=Nys|first2=Yves|last3=Gautron|first3=Joel|title=The Role of Matrix Proteins in Eggshell Formation|journal=The Journal of Poultry Science|year=2010|volume=47|issue=3|pages=208–219|doi=10.2141/jpsa.009122|doi-access=free}}</ref> and thus long predate the first chickens.
==Assuming a chicken egg==


==Disputations==
In this case, the egg is assumed to be a chicken's egg. This is an obvious assumption since the question itself implies a link between the two.
In Indonesia, on 24 July 2024, two men were at a drinking party when they entered into a chicken-or-egg debate. One man became so emotionally enraged, he left and returned with a knife, stabbing the other 15 times, killing him. It's uncertain which side – chicken or egg – the killer took.<ref>{{cite web |last=Sharma |first=Shweta |title=Indonesian man stabs friend to death over chicken or egg debate |work=The Independent |date=30 July 2024 |access-date=2024-08-01 |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/southeast-asia/indonesia-chicken-egg-question-murder-sulawesi-b2588159.html }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Beschizza |first=Rob |title=Man stabbed to death in debate over whether chicken or egg came first |work=] |date=1 August 2024 |access-date=2024-04-01 |url=https://boingboing.net/2024/08/01/man-stabbed-to-death-in-debate-over-whether-chicken-or-egg-came-first.html }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last= |first= |title=Perkara Teka-teki Ayam atau Telur Duluan, Pria di Sultra Bunuh Temannya |date=27 July 2024 |work=Kumparan |access-date=2024-04-01 |url=https://kumparan.com/kumparannews/perkara-teka-teki-ayam-atau-telur-duluan-pria-di-sultra-bunuh-temannya-23D1L0YXc97 |language=id}}</ref>


==See also==
If one assumes the egg to be a chicken egg then one must define what a chicken egg is:
* ], the solution to an analogous problem in computer science
* ]
* ]


==References==
* If: '''A chicken egg will ] a chicken'''
{{Reflist}}
''Then a bypass is allowed: An animal that was not a chicken laid the chicken egg which contained the first chicken. In this case the egg came first.''


==Further reading==
*If: '''A chicken egg is the egg that a chicken lays'''
{{Wiktionary|chicken-or-egg question}}
''Then a bypass is allowed: A chicken (that hatched from a non-chicken egg) laid an egg (a chicken egg). In this case the chicken came first.''
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230328152932/https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/1706-1.174049 |date=2023-03-28 }} 12 July 2010 {{cite journal|doi=10.1002/anie.201000679|pmid=20540126|volume=49|title=Structural Control of Crystal Nuclei by an Eggshell Protein|year=2010|journal=Angewandte Chemie International Edition|pages=5135–5137|last1=Freeman|first1=Colin L.|last2=Harding|first2=John H.|last3=Quigley|first3=David|last4=Rodger|first4=P. Mark|issue=30}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:Chicken Or Egg}}
*If: '''A chicken egg will hatch a chicken''' ''and'' '''A chicken egg is the egg that a chicken lays.'''
]
''Then there may be an ]. If the definition of "chicken" used does not refer to "chicken eggs", then the chicken must come first, because without chickens there cannot be any chicken eggs.''
]

]
==Evolutionary chicken==
]

]
In this case, the egg is not assumed to be a chicken egg. In effect this changes the question to: ''"Which came first, a chicken or '''any''' egg"''.
]

]
From a ] point of view this question can be answered quite easily. The egg came first because any ] is called an egg.
]

If the egg is defined structurally as the hard shelled thing, and the chicken a feather covered animal, the answer is still simple. ]ary scientists believe the first hard shell egg was the ] laid around 300 million years ago, and was laid by the animal who was the link between amphibians and reptiles. One of the first dinosaurs that we know had feathers was the ], and came much later. Modern birds would not arise until 150 million years ago, descending from ] dinosaurs.

In this case, the first chicken must have been the ] offspring of a proto-chicken that laid the egg containing the first true chicken. In any case, this creature hatched from a recognizable egg. After all, the question is purposefully ambiguous -- it is not, "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?"

The crux of the matter is how to biologically define 'a chicken'. What level of ] similarity or ] similarity determine whether an organism is a chicken? One can only define what was the first chicken after the fact, thus any definition of the first chicken becomes arbitrary. The question 'which came first?' ignores the complicated reality of ].

According to the principles of speciation, neither the chicken nor the egg came first, because speciation does not occur in simple, obvious units. In fact, evolution is about a slow transition in an overall population. What qualifies as “chicken” (ignoring the many diverse modern types of chicken) involves a wide range of genetic traits (]s) that are not encompassed in a single individual and continue to be modified from generation to generation.

The transition from non-chicken to chicken is a ] in which several generations are involved, and therefore which includes many many chicken-and-egg events, with no one step representing the whole. Since the result of the process is an incomplete transition into various new characteristics rather than one single blueprint, a new species, "chicken", is only identified in hindsight when the species can be obviously identified as different from its ancestral stock.

==Creationist chicken==

The creationist counterpoint to the evolutionary viewpoint could be that the first chicken was made by the ], and then that first chicken laid the first egg. A similar resolution is possible under any other conditions where the first chicken arose from any means other than an egg. The dilemma remains, however, because it is equally plausible that the Creator began by creating the first chicken egg, from which the first chick subsequently hatched.

==A question of whether chickens exist==

It has been suggested that the definition of "chicken egg" could be "an egg that was laid by a chicken", creating a perpetual causal loop. An equally valid logical resolution to the problem is to assume that there are, in fact, no chickens.

==A question of syntax==

One can consider the question inside the framework of experience, making the question concrete instead of abstract: Which came first - the chicken or the egg? "The chicken" came first - ]. If the question is phrased differently, the answer is different.

==Reframing the question==

It could be said that the question simply requires one to know the context. Most people thinking of the question automatically think of the ] and it is in this manner that both ] and religious teachings contexts arise. Other potential contexts are:
* Having looked through a dictionary from front to back, ''which came ]? - the chicken or the egg?''
* When you walked ], ''which came first? - the chicken or the egg?''
* When reading the ], ''which came first? - the chicken or the egg?''

== See also ==

* ] (Problems with chickens beyond which came first)
* ]
* ], i.e., how to write a compiler for a previously uncompiled language using the language itself.
* ]

Other ] related
*]
*]

]
]
]

]
]
]
]

Latest revision as of 04:23, 6 December 2024

Philosophical paradox

Illustration of a woman collecting hens' eggs from Tacuina sanitatis, 14th century

The chicken or the egg causality dilemma is commonly stated as the question, "which came first: the chicken or the egg?" The dilemma stems from the observation that all chickens hatch from eggs and all chicken eggs are laid by chickens. "Chicken-and-egg" is a metaphoric adjective describing situations where it is not clear which of two events should be considered the cause and which should be considered the effect, to express a scenario of infinite regress, or to express the difficulty of sequencing actions where each seems to depend on others being done first. Plutarch posed the question as a philosophical matter in his essay "The Symposiacs", written in the 1st century CE.

Ancient legacy

The question represents an ancient folk paradox addressing the problem of origins and first cause. Aristotle, writing in the fourth century BCE, concluded that this was an infinite sequence, with no true origin. Plutarch, writing four centuries later, specifically highlighted this question as bearing on a "great and weighty problem (whether the world had a beginning)". In the fifth century CE, Macrobius wrote that while the question seemed trivial, it "should be regarded as one of importance".

By the end of the 16th century, the well-known question seemed to have been regarded as settled in the Christian world, based on the origin story of the Bible. In describing the creation of animals, it allows for a first chicken that did not come from an egg. However, later Enlightenment philosophers began to question this solution. Carlo Dati in the mid 17th-century published an erudite satire on the subject.

Scientific resolutions

Although the question is typically used metaphorically, evolutionary biology provides literal answers, made possible by the Darwinian principle that species evolve over time, and thus that chickens had ancestors that were not chickens, similar to a view expressed by the Greek philosopher Anaximander when addressing the paradox.

If the question refers to eggs in general, the egg came first. The first amniote egg – that is, a hard-shelled egg that could be laid on land, rather than remaining in water like the eggs of fish or amphibians – appeared around 312 million years ago. In contrast, chickens are domesticated descendants of red junglefowl and probably arose little more than eight thousand years ago, at most.

If the question refers to chicken eggs specifically, the answer is still the egg, but the explanation is more complicated. The process by which the chicken arose through the interbreeding and domestication of multiple species of wild jungle fowl is poorly understood, and the point at which this evolving organism became a chicken is a somewhat arbitrary distinction. Whatever criteria one chooses, an animal nearly identical to the modern chicken (i.e., a proto-chicken) laid a fertilized egg that had DNA making it a modern chicken due to mutations in the mother's ovum, the father's sperm, or the fertilised zygote.

It has been suggested that the actions of a protein found in modern chicken eggs may make the answer different. In the uterus, chickens produce ovocleidin-17 (OC-17), which causes the formation of the thickened calcium carbonate shell around their eggs. Because OC-17 is expressed by the hen and not the egg, the bird in which the protein first arose, though having hatched from a non-reinforced egg, would then have laid the first egg having such a reinforced shell: the chicken would have preceded this first 'modern' chicken egg. However, the presence of OC-17 or a homolog in other species, such as turkeys and finches suggests that such eggshell-reinforcing proteins are common to all birds, and thus long predate the first chickens.

Disputations

In Indonesia, on 24 July 2024, two men were at a drinking party when they entered into a chicken-or-egg debate. One man became so emotionally enraged, he left and returned with a knife, stabbing the other 15 times, killing him. It's uncertain which side – chicken or egg – the killer took.

See also

References

  1. "Essays and Miscellanies, by Plutarch". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  2. O'Brien, Carl Séan (2015). The Demiurge in Ancient Thought. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-1-107-07536-8.
  3. ^ Sorensen, Roy (2003). A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 4–11. ISBN 978-0-19-515903-5.
  4. ^ Fabry, Merrill (2016-09-21). "Now You Know: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?". Time. Retrieved 2017-07-11.
  5. Cicalata sopra chi fosse prima o la gallina o l'ouovo, by Carlo Dati, Presse Settembre, Naples, 1840.
  6. Benton, Michael J.; Donoghue, Philip C. J. (2007-01-01). "Paleontological Evidence to Date the Tree of Life". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 24 (1): 26–53. doi:10.1093/molbev/msl150. ISSN 0737-4038. PMID 17047029.
  7. Miao, Y-W; Peng, M-S; Wu, G-S; Ouyang, Y-N; Yang, Z-Y; Yu, N; Liang, J-P; Pianchou, G; Beja-Pereira, A (2012-12-05). "Chicken domestication: an updated perspective based on mitochondrial genomes". Heredity. 110 (3): 277–282. doi:10.1038/hdy.2012.83. ISSN 1365-2540. PMC 3668654. PMID 23211792.
  8. Sorensen, Roy A. (1992). "The Egg came before the chicken". Mind. 101 (403): 541–542. doi:10.1093/mind/101.403.541.
  9. Breyer, Melissa (2013-02-11). "Finally answered! Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". Mother Nature Network. Retrieved 2017-07-11.
  10. ^ Zushi, Yo (27 February 2017). "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?". NewStatesman.com.
  11. ^ "Which came first, the chicken or the egg? British scientists claim to have solved the mystery". NBCnews.com. 14 July 2010.
  12. Mann, Karlheinz; Mann, Matthias (2013). "The proteome of the calcified layer organic matrix of turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) eggshell". Proteome Sci. 11 (1): 40. doi:10.1186/1477-5956-11-40. PMC 3766105. PMID 23981693.
  13. Mann, Karlheinz (2015). "The calcified eggshell matrix proteome of a songbird, the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata)". Proteome Sci. 13: 29. doi:10.1186/s12953-015-0086-1. PMC 4666066. PMID 26628892.
  14. Hincke, Maxwell T.; Nys, Yves; Gautron, Joel (2010). "The Role of Matrix Proteins in Eggshell Formation". The Journal of Poultry Science. 47 (3): 208–219. doi:10.2141/jpsa.009122.
  15. Sharma, Shweta (30 July 2024). "Indonesian man stabs friend to death over chicken or egg debate". The Independent. Retrieved 2024-08-01.
  16. Beschizza, Rob (1 August 2024). "Man stabbed to death in debate over whether chicken or egg came first". BoingBoing. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  17. "Perkara Teka-teki Ayam atau Telur Duluan, Pria di Sultra Bunuh Temannya". Kumparan (in Indonesian). 27 July 2024. Retrieved 2024-04-01.

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