On The Art Of Discourse
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
An ancient question that isn’t meant to be answered. It’s a thought experiment, a philosophical exercise that explores ideas of causality, infinity and cause and effect. It’s a paradox that’s meant to tickle your brain and challenges you to flex your rhetorical muscle and practice methodical thinking.
It occupied the minds of great thinkers the likes of Aristotle and Plutarch. Even if there is not much value to actually finding an answer, the question itself is not without merit, and the pondering it begs for is certainly worthwhile. It tickles regions of your brain that lie dormant far too often.
All (chicken) eggs are laid by chickens, and all chickens hatch from eggs — an infinite loop, or more precisely: an infinite regression. The only way to answer a question like this, is to find a way to break free of the loop.
This can easily be achieved by intentionally misinterpreting the question. Cheating basically. The question does not explicitly ask for a chicken egg, and eggs have existed for far longer than chickens — far longer than dinosaurs even. So, obviously the egg in general predates the chicken by quite a lot.
But what about the chicken egg specifically? What makes an egg a chicken egg? You could argue that it’s size or shape or color differs from other animal’s eggs — but the probably most important differentiating factor is, that the fetus inside will grow into a chicken, rather than some other animal. It’s not the calcium carbonate shell that makes the egg — it is what grows inside that counts.
If you approach the question from an evolutionary standpoint, the cycle of chickens birthing chickens is not actually infinite. Unsurprisingly, the chicken did evolve from it’s ancestors — and it might not even be possible to really nail down the exact moment it became a chicken and stopped being something else. Evolution is a very gradual process after all. But it isn’t important where to draw the line — it’s only important to know this line has to exist. Obviously, if you go back far enough the ancestral line, you’ll end up with animals that are clearly not chickens.
At some point in time, an animal that was not a chicken, gave birth to the very first chicken. That is, through cross-breeding or genetic mutation, this not-a-chicken laid an egg that contained the genetic material of a chicken. A chicken egg! And then the first chicken hatched from that egg.
This is the principle of first cause. We broke free of the loop by figuring out how it all started in the first place. Turns out, it is not infinite after all. Of course neither Plutarch nor Aristotle knew of this.
But what if someone had a different idea about what actually is a chicken or an egg? You might argue that a chicken doesn’t just magically turn into a chicken the moment it hatches — but that it already has been a chicken before. Maybe even as far back as the moment of inception, when the genetic sequence that makes it an individual chicken was actually assembled.
You might further argue, that the fertilized ovum, when it’s just a single cell, does not quite qualify as being a chicken egg yet. There is no yolk, there is no white, there is no shell —there is no egg. It’s a chicken, but not an egg. Thus you might argue, the chicken came first after all.
And to that I might answer: But why are we arguing now? Why are you trying to start a quarrel over this? And honestly, I’d be an absolute jerk for doing so.
You see, there’s nothing bad about having an argument. Quite to the contrary, arguments are a great way to explore ideas, look at questions from different angles, and further develop one’s ideas and thoughts. Plutarch and Aristotle knew this very well and even intentionally practiced the art of having an argument. But there’s everything wrong with an answer as the one I outline above. It pulls the discussion towards being emotionally charged. It’s accusatory and inflammatory. Something like that must never happen during a civilized argument.
Instead I should welcome your counter-argument, and thank you for providing even more food for thought. Without you, I’d be done — the egg came first, end of the line of thought. Nothing more to explore here. But now, thanks to you, I get to go even deeper down the rabbit hole. Tickle even weirder regions of my brain. Refine my side of the argument even further. Get even more out of this.
Or we could just agree that it’s been enough discussion for now, and leave it at that. Maybe pick it up again another time. That’s always an option — and we should always consider it, and agree to take it when things get too heated or tedious. Knowing when to stop is a highly valuable skill — and this might be good practice. Feel free to stop reading right here, if you don’t agree to continue this debate!
So you do think the chicken might have come first after all. Well, maybe you don’t truly believe so, but only brought it up in the spirit of having a good discussion. Plutarch and Aristotle would applaud you, for being able to so eloquently argue a view that isn’t even yours.
There’s a little problem with your logic though. It doesn’t really work, because it breaks the question. Your solution is based on two assumptions — firstly that the ovum is a chicken and secondly that the ovum is not a chicken egg. But any internally consistent definition of chicken that includes the ovum will by extension also include the egg. It’s not logical that the ovum would be a chicken, then would stop being a chicken while being an egg, and then would become a chicken once more.
But if the egg is a chicken, then the question “the chicken or the egg” no longer makes any sense. In a way this is cheating the question, in the same vein that including dinosaur eggs was. Within the context of this question, “egg” is meant to refer to a chicken egg, and “chicken” is meant to refer to an adult animal. If we allow for “chicken” to refer to the ovum and the egg as well, the question stops being a valid question, and there can’t be a correct answer to a nonsense question.
By twisting the question around and sneakily diverging from the implied meaning present in the question, you were able to construct an argument that sounds plausible enough to counter my claim that the egg came first. But it does not hold up to closer scrutiny. At this point we are no longer searching for an answer — but we are purely exercising our rhetoric skills in an attempt to win the argument, rather than trying to glean further insights.
It’s still worthwhile doing so. The better we know and understand those rhetoric tricks, the more will we be able to spot such twisted arguments. And the more we can spot these twisted arguments, the less we are susceptible to falling for them. Learning and practicing these skills makes us more resilient to being influenced and manipulated by others more skilled than us.
Therefore we should argue more, have discussions and do so regularly. Innocent topics like the chicken and the egg are a great place to start with, as they are unlikely to get anyone upset. You need to have some practice before you can safely take on more challenging topics like politics or religion. But achieving that is absolutely worth the effort.
Don’t we live in a world that absolutely could do with a few more people being able to have a calm and civilized discussion about incendiary topics, and know how to apply methodical thinking?
With sincerest apologies to Plutarch and Aristotle.
