this post was submitted on 18 May 2024

679 points (100.0% liked)

Science Memes

234 readers

35 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

!spiders@lemmy.world

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Sal@mander.xyz

fossilesque@mander.xyz

SciBot@mander.xyz

679

Chicken vs Egg (mander.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 46 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

The chicken vs egg question has never been about chronology or science.

It’s been about religion vs science.

Science says the egg came first: something nearly imperceptibly not quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched a chicken. That’s how evolution works, with the egg coming first.

Religion says a god poofed a chicken into existence. The chicken came first, and only ever laid pure chicken eggs. The eggs will forever hatch a chicken and nothing but a chicken.

That’s the chicken vs egg thing. It’s not a puzzle at all, it’s just science vs religion.

e: simplified. I’m too wordy by default.

[–] srecko@lemm.ee 31 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You can interpret it that way now but that's not the original meanig.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_or_the_egg

I understand and respect where you are coming from but i prefer not to rewrite history while arguing about ideas.

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 months ago

You’re right, I shouldn’t have said ‘never’. It was a paradox in ancient history, but at least in my lifetime, I’ve read it as basically solved. That may be a relatively recent stance (since 100-200 years ago), but it doesn’t seem useful to continue presenting it as a paradox at this point.

[–] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 20 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I've always interpreted it as which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?

But I'd just like to point out not all religions have that view of creationism vs evolution, and even within Christianity it's really only your super conservative, and very loud, fundamentalists. Catholicism doesn't have an official stance on evolution, iirc, the Episcopal church in the USA is fully supportive of evolution, as are most mainline Christians. Not to detract from your point or anything, I just don't like seeing all religious people, or all Christians, lumped together with some of the worst examples of religiosity that the US has to offer.

[–] InternetPerson@lemmings.world 13 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Religion is usually bad, so I don't have an issue lumping them all together.

[–] Chobeo@discuss.online 2 points 6 months ago

Jesus is the Ted McGinley of family gatherings.

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] 01101000_01101001@mander.xyz 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is by far the most correct answer to the chicken and egg question.

[–] Jako301@feddit.de 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Not really, it still doesn't answer the question as the main thing is still unclear.

Is the first chicken egg the one the chicken hatched from or the first egg a chicken laid.

Both can be argued as correct.

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not-quite-a-chicken laid an egg containing a definitely-chicken. Actual chicken egg was first.

[–] flora_explora 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We are so zoomed in evolution at this point that the arbitrary distinction between what is a chicken and what not doesn't make any sense anymore. Evolution does some jumps, but it is still hard to actually draw the line where a nearly-chicken has not been a chicken yet. Maybe someone could fill in my mental gap in here for me, but hasn't Richard Dawkins given the example of some animal (possibly a rabbit?) that is traced back in evolution and since you cannot draw the line when it hasn't been that animal it is rabbits all the way down?

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, the fossil record and dna analysis is such a gradient, any lines we draw are arbitrary. To be fair, those lines were always for our own convenience, in much the same way it’s useful for print designers to specify Pantone 032, but if most people look at the full colour chart they couldn’t even tell you where ‘red’ becomes ‘orange’.

It’s definitely rabbits (or turtles) all the way down.

We’re prokaryotes, and vertebrates, and mammals, and from there some people get bent. Are we apes? Genus homo? Where must we draw the line to ensure we’re not actually animals like other living things and were divinely inspired special creations?

I like simplicity. Life is a beautiful prismatic projection and it doesn’t matter that much what our Pantone swatch turns out to be.

(Sorry, /mini rant)

[–] flora_explora 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Well, I actually completely agree with you and thought your initial comment to be quite interesting. I've never viewed this thought experiment as to be science vs religion.

My point in my previous comment was exactly that, all our lines and categories are arbitrary. They're really useful to us, but in the end still arbitrary. I enjoy categorizing stuff and so I like taxonomy a lot. But I always have to keep in mind that the categories I choose are ultimately human made and can never represent the full spectrum of nature.

Pantone 032 feels to aggressive to me, can I have another color? :P

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 45 points 6 months ago (4 children)

At which point does an egg of non-chicken become an egg of chicken?

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 62 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Chickenness is a spectrum, not a binary

[–] dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

That's quite controversial.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 29 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by a chicken, or an egg that will hatch into a chicken?

[–] PapaStevesy@midwest.social 29 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's an egg that will hatch into a chicken, since the "first" chicken must have hatched out of an egg that was laid and fertilized by two "non-chickens" whose DNA combined together to make a full-blown chicken. Of course it wasn't actually just one egg, but really, no matter how you think about it, the egg came first.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I agree, and I've made the same argument. It's perfectly valid, Unless the egg belongs to the creature who laid it, instead of the creature that hatched from it.

If the egg in question is a "proto-chicken's egg" because it was laid by a proto-chicken, then the chicken would have come before the chicken egg.

[–] PapaStevesy@midwest.social 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No it wouldn't. If we're going to talk about the creation of chickens as happening at a single instance of egg-laying, the two progenitors of said first chicken would be proto-chickens whose DNA combined in the fertilized egg to make, for the first time ever, a chicken. Yes, it's a chicken egg, because it contains a chicken, but it's also a proto-chicken's egg because it wasn't laid by a full chicken. It couldn't have been, they didn't exist yet.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There is no question as to the biology. The first egg that would hatch a chicken was laid by a proto-chicken. The genetic mutation that delineated chicken from proto-chicken first existed in that egg.

By your argument, the status of the egg is dependent on what it contains.

Suppose that proto-chicken pair laid an egg. And instead of it hatching into a chicken, I ate it. This egg never became a chicken; it was only an egg. It couldn't be a chicken egg, because it never contained a chicken. It could only be a proto-chicken egg.

The egg that the chicken hatched from only became a chicken egg once there was a chicken inside it. The chicken egg, therefore, could not precede the chicken.

[–] PapaStevesy@midwest.social 4 points 6 months ago (12 children)

No, if a chicken could hatch out of it, regardless of whether or not it actually did, it's a chicken egg. Nothing else could hatch out of it and it didn't somehow cease to have been an egg just because it doesn't hatch.

load more comments (12 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Sadbutdru@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 months ago

I feel like my comment in another thread is even more relevant here:

I have no direct knowledge about that, but if we take the analogy of the egg (shell, albumen and yolk sack) being the life-support system of the embryo during gestation, in humans the placenta would be a big part of that, and exactly whose body it is part of its not simple (from what I remember both mother and child contribute cells, and the 'plan' for building it comes from the father's genes). So maybe for chickens it could be ambiguous whether the shell 'belongs' to the laying generation or the hatching one. Seems like mostly a human taxonomy distinction to make anyway, obviously it's in between the two, but we like to draw the line somewhere.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 3 points 6 months ago

Wherever humans draw the line. The meme uses the assumption that there is a clear change from earlier species to later descendants, when it reality it is a continuous change of many characteristics each time an individual reproduces and spreads their genetics. It's the flaw of the missing link argument.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 30 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I don't like this because it's not addressing the actual saying. Obviously the saying is about chicken eggs specifically.

But I've always felt obviously the egg came first. The first chicken was born in an egg, so the egg came first. That egg could have been produced from a creature with a mutation which caused it to produce the first chicken egg when it is not itself the exact same species.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ah, but when that line of tiny change is so arbitrary... Is it a true chicken until it grows up and fulfils its destiny? Is it a chicken based purely on its genetic code, so the egg whence it hatched is a chicken egg; or is it truly a chicken when it becomes a chicken..... meh, I write this far and find I still agree with you: even in that case the egg it hatched from becomes a chicken egg by virtue of the chicken it grew into.

[–] bob_lemon@feddit.de 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

In other words, the question becomes: "Is an egg defined by the creature that laid it, or the creature that will hatch from it?"

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Holzkohlen@feddit.de 4 points 6 months ago

But I think it's not about chicken at all. People just don't know which creature on earth laid the first egg, so the chicken is just a stand-in. As chicken are the species we most associate with eggs for obvious reasons. What came first: the first egg or the first egg-laying creature? Has to be the egg-laying creature, but then how did that get born?

[–] srecko@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

It's somehiw obvious now, but the question appeared 25 centuries ago when it wasn't even remotely clear what was the answer.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I believe this is correct as I read in a book somewhere that it was a kind of proto-chicken if you will, that laid an egg of which came a the first chicken.

The more interesting question is how long did it take for the first BBQ Chicken.

[–] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Real question is which came first, BBQ chicken or the Eggs Benedict?

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 months ago

That is an interesting one.

I did a quick search using Arc and it says eggs Benedict was 1860s and BBQ. Chicken is unknown.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

But which came first:

The chicken or the chicken's egg? Did the first chicken come from a chicken egg? Or did it come from a snake egg?

[–] aeharding@vger.social 4 points 6 months ago

Based on the jpeg, this meme came first

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 months ago

I recall reading somewhere that it would have been a proto- chicken kind of thing. Like not quite a chicken but it laid an egg and the first chicken came out.

Maybe a gene mutation of some sort.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] TurboHarbinger@feddit.cl 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Are chickens even real?

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 4 points 6 months ago

Yes, unless declared integer.

[–] InternetPerson@lemmings.world 4 points 6 months ago

Or are they local?

[–] itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

An egg is technically a single cell. So, eggs came first as those were the first forms of life.

[–] androogee@midwest.social 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Eggs are single cells, but all single cells are not eggs.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I guess the tree branch needs to start somewhere, but why leave out amphibians?

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thats on the branch labeled traitors that leads to paying bills.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 months ago

egg laying animals came long before chickens, why was that ever hard to figure out for anyone?

[–] BrazenSigilos@ttrpg.network 4 points 6 months ago

The egg came first. To the chickens disappointment and, who left to find a more satisfying partner.

[–] Peter_Arbeitslos@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I love charts without units and labeled axes.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This isn’t a graph, it’s a phylogenetic tree. It doesn’t need units or labeled axes (and they wouldn’t make much sense anyways).

[–] Peter_Arbeitslos@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

So you can't write dates/millenia on the "y-axis" (time axis)? Since when do turtles exist for example?

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 6 points 6 months ago

Then it'd have to be to-scale. That's not good if you only care about the order.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments