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The chicken or the egg causality dilemma is commonly stated as "which came first: the chicken or the egg?". The dilemma stems from the observation that all chickens hatch from eggs and therefore eggs predate chickens but conversely all chicken eggs are laid by chickens. Considering this paradox leads the questioner into a feedback loop. To ancient philosophers, the question about the first chicken or egg also evoked the questions of how life and the universe began.

Scientific resolutions

Scientific answers to the paradox deal with the literal "which came first" question, not the metaphorical questions that may be implied, which are better answered by philosophy. Fossil records show that eggs in general existed before birds so the question asked should be "which came first: the chicken or the chicken egg?".

According to evolutionary biology, genetic mutations in the gamete of an animal similar to a chicken (its evolutionary ancestor) caused the resulting zygote to have the same DNA as the modern chicken. Therefore a bird similar to a chicken laid a mutated egg which hatched into a chicken, making "the egg came first" the technically valid viewpoint. The proto-chicken was likewise formed by its ancestor and so on, going back to single called organisms.

Philosophical resolutions

Ancient philosophers did not consider the possibility of biological evolution as an answer to the question. Aristotle (384–322 BC) was puzzled by the idea that there could be a first bird or egg and concluded that both the bird and egg must have always existed:

If there has been a first man he must have been born without father or mother – which is repugnant to nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg.

The same he held good for all species, believing, with Plato, "that everything before it appeared on earth had first its being in spirit."

A dialectical answer (that of Hegel and Marx) is that the egg and chicken exist in a dialectical relationship; the problem, it says, is that we are approaching an organic/dialectical relationship with the mindset of formal logic, (linear cause-and-effect). Using this mindset, we reach a paradox, for we only see it in terms of "this caused that". To reach the true nature of this relationship, we have to admit the fact that the egg creates the chicken just as much as the chicken creates the egg. Hegel uses an analogy of a bud:

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them, at the same time, moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole.

See also

• Evolutionary biology
• Sexual reproduction
• Common descent

References

1. Theosophy (September 1939). "Ancient Landmarks: Plato and Aristotle". Theosophy. 27 (11): 483–491. Archived from the original on February 2013. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |archivedate= (help)
2. "Finally answered! Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". MNN - Mother Nature Network.
3. François Fénelon: Abrégé des vies des anciens philosophes, Paris 1726, p. 314 (French). Translation: Lives of the ancient philosophers, London 1825, p. 202 (English)
4. Blavatsky, H.P. (1877). Isis Unveiled. pp. I, 426–428.

• Paradoxes
• Chicken
• Eggs in culture
• Metaphors referring to birds