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What came first?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 6:53 am
by Nitro
Now this one's serious, and I expect the answer with a solid reason.
What came first, hen or egg?
Re: What came first?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 8:03 am
by MIAR, Holy Commander
xD
Re: What came first?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 1:11 pm
by Nitro
MIAR wrote:xD
I'm serious!
Re: What came first?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 5:44 pm
by l bear l
one can say that the ancestor of the chicken was not the chicken we know it to be today, but still laid eggs nonetheless.
(il 'nitpick' since that seems to be what you want)
but that becomes a kind of infinite regress right? Are not dinosaurs or reptiles assigned as the late ancestors of birds? should the question be: What Came First The Reptile or The Egg?
but something is the ancestor of a reptile, no?
it all comes down to what word you use.
Did that forceful burst of energy that created our world leave on it some sort of micro life that evolved into an egg laying species or did it leave on it an egg like substance which the micro life "hatched" from? (This is a question made out of my lack of knowledge of Darwinian Biology)
Or one can agree with Genesis and state that God created all living things on earth as we know them.
im sure there are others...
Re: What came first?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 8:44 pm
by Bell
Actually if you want to get right down to it, the answer is almost always The Egg.
Why? Because the asker must usually define 'the Hen'.
From any biological perspective, any range of DNA or chromosomal values acceptable as 'Hen' will have a 'first instance', usually due to some odd crossbreeding or a genetic mutation either in a gamete cell before fusion or after fusion.
This first instance of 'that which is within the acceptable range of hen' will hatch from an egg, reducing the question to basically the semantics of the following.
If the egg in question, containing 'the first Hen', is considered to be The Egg in the question, then The Egg was first.
If only an egg laid by 'the first Hen' is viably considered a Hen Egg, and only Hen Eggs can be The Egg, then the Hen was first, since it did not hatch from an egg laid by a previous instance of Hen.
So really, the person who asks the question defines the answer in their mind before anyone else can give it, making it a very Zen sort of thing, but nice to ponder. Of course, enlightened ones can easily work out the above.
Biology + Computing Logic Principles + Defined Terms. Gotta love it.
Re: What came first?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 8:58 pm
by Waleed
I don't know =/
Re: What came first?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 9:16 pm
by Kaithar
Bell wrote:Actually if you want to get right down to it, the answer is almost always The Egg.
Why? Because the asker must usually define 'the Hen'.
Ah but hun, there's no point defining the Hen until after we've defined The Egg.
The question isn't actually specific, it doesn't say that the hen must come from the egg or that the hen must lay the egg.
It just says egg.
Since pretty much all the dinosaurs, being reptiles, laid eggs, clearly the egg predates the chicken by many thousands of years.
Kaithar, not just thinking outside the box but defining the box to have no inside, since 1985.
Re: What came first?
Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 3:55 am
by MIAR, Holy Commander
i got 2 solutions
1st - it just says hen and egg.it isn't necessary that it is a hen's egg.it could be a dino egg or something else.So the egg came first
2nd - It was a hybrid of 2 other animals.So egg came first
Re: What came first?
Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 3:58 pm
by Nitro
Knight_Warrior wrote:Nitro wrote:Now this one's serious, and I expect the answer with a solid reason.
What came first, hen or egg?
Well, I Heard It From Sarius...And Its A Pretty Good Answer..
What Was Ordered First Came First !

Nothing was ordered, okay? Nice PJ btw.
Kaithar's answer was the simplest and the best. You guys
were supposed to think out of the box, that's right.
But if you think
outside it, still the answer is...well, Bell's right there. It depends on the definition of a "Hen egg". There are two, as bell said- A hen laid the egg, or there was a hen(though not probably full size) inside the egg. Hmm.....what if we define it combining both the options-" A hen laid the egg and there was a hen inside the egg." In this case, the answer is - Egg. Egg wins over hen by 2 to 1 (votes)! So yay for eggs!! Mmmm..omlettes...
Wonder is we could say "A hen didn't lay the egg and there wasn't a hen inside the egg"....oh, but that wouldn't be inside the box.
And Miar, can you explain that second point?
Re: What came first?
Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2010 3:48 pm
by Nerafim
Oh lol, I remembered this topic from before.
Well, you know, I just tend to follow the letter of science on this one.
The chicken itself is just a species of birds, in other words a form of evolution. It changes through the generation, so at some point the chicken is just something that ended up being born out of a different bird species.
And the cycle keeps going like that, until you reach completley different species of birds, and then birds are the evolution class formed from the previous one: reptiles.
So the answer is quite simple.
Q: Which came first? The chicken or the egg?
A: THE DINOSAURS!!!