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Which came first — the chicken or the egg?
The question has a reputation for being difficult, perhaps even impossible, to answer. Philosophers treat it as a conundrum. But in the hands of an experimental scientist, the question is simple and straightforward, and the answer is easily obtained.
I doubt that I am the first to solve the chicken-and-egg problem, but a search of the scientific literature turned up surprisingly few accounts — none, in fact — of previous work. Here, then, is an account of my work on what turns out to be a trivial question.
[caption id="attachment_53871" align="aligncenter" width="308" caption="Figure 2. The 2003 USPS regulations for mailing chickens."][/caption]
How the Problem was Solved
Which came first — the chicken of the egg? I tackled the question experimentally, using a chicken, an egg, and the United States Postal Service (USPS).
I mailed the chicken and the egg, each in its own separate packaging, and kept careful track of when each shipment was sent from a post office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and when it subsequently arrived at its intended destination in New York City.
The Chicken
In mailing the chicken, I was careful to adhere to the restrictions described in the Postal Service’s Domestic Mail Manual [DMM] 57, as updated in Postal Bulletin [PB] 2209, April 3, 2003. (See Figure 1.) This, the most recent, version of the DMM states that:
"Adult chickens must be sent by Express Mail. The Express Mail containers used must pass the standards in International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) Test Procedure 1A (detailed in Publication 2, Packaging for Mailing); be designed to remain intact during normal handling; be constructed to totally confine the chickens; contain shavings or other material to prevent damage to the bottom of the container; and be ventilated properly to ensure humane treatment in transit. The number of birds in each parcel must not exceed the container manufacturer’s limit."
I mailed the chicken in a crate obtained from a colleague who does research with poultry at a midwestern university. Details are available on request, for anyone who wishes to replicate this experiment.
[caption id="attachment_53872" align="aligncenter" width="308" caption="Figure 3. Eggs. Each of the eggs shown here is similar to the egg used in the experiment."][/caption]
The Egg
I mailed the egg in standard packaging obtained through an industrial supplier. Details are available on request, for anyone who wishes to replicate this experiment.
[caption id="attachment_53873" align="alignright" width="155" caption="Figure 1. The 1993 USPS regulations for mailing adult chickens. The more recent version is substantially the same, but does not feature the clear sub-section heading “Mailability of Adult Chickens.”"][/caption]
Bon Voyage
I mailed both the chicken and the egg at 9:40 a.m., on a Monday morning, from the Harvard Square post office, in Cambridge. The staff there told me that this was the first chicken anyone had mailed from Harvard Square in recent memory, and perhaps ever. Nonetheless, the postal employees handled both the chicken and the egg deftly, with dispatch, and with courtesy.
The intended destination for both packages was the James A. Farley General Post Office, which is located in Manhattan right next to the Penn Station train terminal.
I took the subway from Harvard Square to the Boston train station, and from there boarded a train to New York City, a distance of approximately 200 miles, arriving that afternoon at Penn Station. I immediately went to the post office, to await the arrivals of the chicken and the egg.
Results
The James A. Farley General Post Office is open 24 hours a day, so I was able to wait there until both items arrived.
I inquired once per hour for both the chicken and the egg.
That day, Monday, neither the chicken nor the egg arrived.
The next day, Tuesday, neither the chicken nor the egg arrived.
The chicken arrived at 10:31 a.m. Wednesday. The staff at the post office told me that this was the first chicken anyone had mailed to the James A. Farley General Post Office in recent memory, and perhaps ever.
The egg arrived that same day, at 9:37 p.m., eleven hours after the chicken.
Conclusion
It has now been empirically determined that the chicken came first, the egg second.
However, seeing the history of previous questions that were taken up first by philosophers and only later by scientists, I am loath to predict that these results — clear as they are — will settle the question to everyone’s satisfaction.
EDITOR'S NOTE: After publication of this article, it became clear that some people are intensely not satisfied. For an example, see THIS LETTER which insists that the chicken must come first.
FURTHER NOT: See THIS REPORT of purely theoretical work, done in 2006, that reaches an opposite conclusion to the result reported here.
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The article above is republished with permission from the July-August 2003 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Creation myth however teaches that the hen was created before the egg...
Thus, the answer may tell more about your religion / scientific preferences...
That's why i really like the
"Chicken is an Egg's Way to Produce More Eggs"
t-shirt..
My take on the original question is similar to Berhard:
At some point in the past, two non-chickens (by whatever definition) mated, and the result, due to recombination and/or mutation, was the egg(s) that grew up to be the first chicken(s).
Ergo, the egg must have come first.
Of course, unless this was a serious bit of punctuation in the evolutionary equilibrium, the line between non-chicken and chicken was a very fuzzy one, so it's hard to say at what point the series went from non-chicken to chicken. But unless a bird magically changed from non-chicken to chicken in the middle of its life, the egg had to come first.
Gary, I think you are both right, and wrong.
You are correct in stating that at some point two non-chickens (by whatever definition) mated. Let us call these "bickens" (as B comes before C). These two bickens mated, and produced a bicken egg. From said bicken egg hatched the first chicken!
Chicken went on to lay first chicken egg.
The real question should be, "Which came first the chicken or the chicken egg?"
Without the chicken, all you have is a bunch of bicken eggs!
The line between chicken and egg is a fuzzy one. Or of chicken and non-chicken.
As to subreption from the whole, the distinction between chicken, egg and non-chicken should present a good example of subreption. The fact that it doesn't illustrates the pervasive perverseness with which subreption occurs.
The question "Which came first..." is similar to a Koan in its provocative perterbations. Similar to the famous Koan "What did your face look like before you were born?"
The solution is dissolution of the distinct categories with which we are dealing. Even if we are tracing the phylogenetic history of the thing and taxanomically reclassifying it as "not a chicken" at some arbitrary point in the past, the solution still involves a dissolution of both objects into a subsuming whole or "non-chicken, non-egg".
A point I've tried to make endlessly, that all of our concepts are subreptions of the whole which can only be properly understood by dissolving the duality. The duality is merely a tool for contemplation and not an absolute reality. There is no "chicken" and "egg" as such to begin to ask which came first.
dinosaurs laid eggs for millions of years before chickens even evolved
if you want a more in depth answer to the version of this question which most people assume is being asked i would request that the question be phrased in a manner which prohibits the answer to other less paradoxical scenarios
I suggest some kind of Schrödinger's Egg...
As long as nothing hatched, it is the egg of whatever is called non-chicken,
as soon as it hatched, it becomes the egg of what hatched. I.e. a chicken hatched from a chicken egg, even if it was layd by a some other animal...
by the way, the original Question was "Chicken or the egg" and not "Chicken or the chicken egg"...
Ohterwise we had to return to Unicellular organisms, that evolved to Multicellular organism and evolved the egg principle, under this assumption the Multicellular organism was first...
I.e. the answer still depends on the initial assumptions..
Chickens (Hens) have been continuously laying eggs in a family line since before chickens were chickens. Eggs however, were already eggs when the dinosaurs laid them.