dvk (08/05/82)
Okay, here is some more stuff to clutter the wires with:
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg."?
Now, seriously. Can you come up with a *proof* that either one or the
other came first. I have a proof that the egg came first, and I am curious
if anyone can refute it and prove the opposite. It goes as follows:
Postulate: Evolution occurs as outlined by Darwin.
Definition: A chicken egg is one that *produces* as chicken, not one that
is produced *by* a chicken.
Proof: If one assumes that "creation" did not include higher life forms,
but instead centered at the protoplasmic level, then all life forms have
evolved into what they appear to be today. Thus, for "man" as we know it
to exist, there must have been a proto-man and a proto-woman that sired
the first "man". (The process is nowhere near as abrupt as this, but this
will suffice for purpose of example). If one believes this, then two
proto-chickens must have mated and produced the first chicken. Since
chickens (and naturally, proto-chickens) lay eggs, the proto-chickens must
have layed an egg that hatched the chicken. By definition above, this is
a chicken egg, and thus the egg came first.
Now, if you change my definition of "chicken egg", you easily come up with
the alternate proof. (Big deal!) And if you say simply "the Bible says God
created all the animals on the earth, so the chicken came first", you also
get Bingo. Apologies to those whom this may offend, but a book, no
matter what it is called, is just a book. I want proof.
So, without changing the definition of chicken egg, can anyone come up
with the opposite proof? You may use any postulates you like, including
scrapping mine. But, "The Bible says so" just won't wash.mkg (08/06/82)
The chicken is the egg's way of preserving itself. Marsh Gosnell BTL Piscataway (201) 981-2758 npois!pyuxbb!mkg
nrh (08/06/82)
Irresistable. Without changing your definition, define a chicken as that which can interbreed (productively!) with chickens. Ignoring a lot of metaphysical stuff about whether the newly produced animal can be called a chicken if there are no other chickens of its caliber, and assuming that it is a chicken because it could interbreed with modern chickens, we have trouble. The problem is that if the egg came first, then what does one call the eggs of the creatures that the (first?) chicken breeds with? Remember, if they can fertilize this chicken, they are chickens-- er -- roosters that are of the chicken's species. If there were no such inter-fertile animals at the time of the emergence of the chicken, then either they appeared (does that sound likely?) at about the same time, or there are today NO CHICKENS. Thus there is no "first egg", and for that matter, no first chicken. Yours for no chickens, Nat Howard
wolit (08/06/82)
Marsh Gosnell's remark ("A chicken is an egg's way of preserving
itself") may have been intended to be humorous, but it is an idea that
is not without merit. You can get an interesting perspective on the
"purpose" of life by looking at some members of the insect world who
carry this philosophy to an extreme: in many cases the adult form of
the organism is in no way dominant, in terms of size, lifespan, or
energy expenditure, but exists solely for the purpose of mating
(once!) to produce eggs. Adult Mayflies, for example, live for only a
few hours (out of a year-long life cycle) and neither feed nor travel
very far from where they emerged. The larval form is the one that does
most of the "living" as we know it (except for sexual activity).
The adults seem sort of like detachable gonads (see earlier
discussions in net.jokes.limericks.q).mark (08/06/82)
Here are two "proofs" that the egg came first.
(1) I'll postulate that evolution occurs by mutation. The mutants that
are inferior tend to tie, those that are superior (rare but certainly
present) tend to do well and become dominant. Now, when does mutation
take place? Either from a defective egg/sperm, or early in the life
of the embryo. Once the reproductive organs in the embryo have
developed, a random mutation is unlikely to affect any offspring.
With this in mind, a proto-chicken pair mate to produce a mutated
(chicken) embryo which becomes a mutated (chicken) egg. This
chicken egg becomes the first chicken. (Presumably it must either
have genetically dominant genes or inbreed with another mutant
from the same litter to perpetutate the species.)
(2) The egg came first, because there were dinosaur eggs long before
there were chickens! (The rules said "the chicken or the egg",
not "the chicken or the chicken egg".)mkg (08/06/82)
My chicken preserving the egg comment was not intended to be humorous (chuckles are OK... I smile when I think about the remark) but rather to prod people to think about the chicken/egg problem from a different viewpoint. Marsh Gosnell BTL Piscataway (201) 981-2758 npois!pyuxbb!mkg
nonh (08/14/82)
For an interesting discussion of "the chicken is the egg's way of preserving itself", read "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins -- available in the Biology section of any textbook store and most decent bookshops. --Chris Robertson (decvax!utzoo!nonh)
mclure@sri-unix (08/15/82)
#R:mi-cec:-12500:sri-unix:1300001:000:497 sri-unix!mclure Aug 15 00:47:00 1982 Dawkins' THE SELFISH GENE has been discredited and should be read as science fiction (as he actually mentions in the foreward). The idea that genes can exist for specific traits, as Dawkins implies, is anathema to most biologists. Much of Dawkins' speculations rest on this idea. However, I felt the book was valuable in one respect: his emotionally overwhelming description of the origin of life. Excerpts of these passages were reprinted in Hofstadter and Dennett's THE MIND'S EYE. Stuart
davidson (08/21/82)
I'm not sure how seriously to take people's chicken/egg arguments, but here goes: This business about chickens mutating from protochickens in a single generation is nonsense. Thus there was never any problem about who to breed with. "Proto-chickens" evolved gradually into chickens, with the result that after a large number of generations, the resulting individuals would no longer be able to breed with their remote ancestors (assuming they were still around).
nonh (08/26/82)
What in the world do you mean, "Dawkins' THE SELFISH GENE has been discredited" ....? It's prescribed reading for standard biology courses here at Univ. of Toronto, and Dawkins is very highly regarded in his profession. Unless you are an ethologist by profesion with friends in evolutionary biology, don't make such wild statements. (Incidentally, I *AM* an ethologist by profession with friends and associates in evolutionary biology...) --Chris Robertson (decvax!utzoo!nonh)