On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 10:08 -0400, tedd wrote: > At 11:00 PM -0400 7/5/07, Robert Cummings wrote: > >On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 22:44 -0400, tedd wrote: > >> At 4:48 PM -0400 7/5/07, Daniel Brown wrote: > >> >On 7/5/07, Robert Cummings <robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> >>On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 15:04 -0500, Kaleb Pomeroy wrote: > >> >>> Which came first, the chicken or the egg? > >> >> > >> >>The egg, fish were laying them long before chickens walked the earth :) > > > > > > > > > > But actually, it was dinosaurs. > > > >Ummmmm... fish predate all land creatures according to evolution.... > >that's not to say something with eggs didn't predate fish, but I'm too > >lazy to go look. > > > Yes, but I was talking about predecessors to the chicken, like > Archeopteryx (one of the first feathered dinosaurs), which is/was (my > education is dated) believed to be the predecessor of birds. > > As far as eggs are concerned, they predate fish considerably. > > So, IF the question is "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" -- > then the answer is clearly "the egg". > > However, if the question is "Which came first, the chicken or the > chicken's egg?" -- then the answer is much less obvious. > > Evolution is alteration in the genetic code usually caused by changes > in the critter's environment. So, the question becomes, is the > alteration of the genetic code found in the egg a random fluctuation > of genetic code not found in the parent, or is it the product of a > lifetime experience, under the influence of the parent's environment, > that changed the parents genetic code in reproduction? > > Also, there is a difference in the genetic code you have and the code > your pass on in terms of dominance/preference with your spouse's > genetic code. In other words, male and female produce something > different than either of them. However, for both to reach > reproduction age, they both had to have "successful" genetic makeup. > As such, their offspring has a different chance, perhaps better, of > reaching reproduction age and passing on it's contribution. > > Now at what point does the offspring differ enough in genetic code to > be classified as a chicken? That's an interesting question > considering that it's offspring may not be a chicken (consider that). > Pre-chickens will have to go through numerous generations before > producing a "true" chicken in our taxonomy. I described below how one knows which came first and for which side of the ambiguity you choose to define "chicken egg". You're above analysis of determining chickens from non-chickens is fabricated confusion in your own mind. We don't need to know the time at which a bird became a chicken, nor do we need to know it's genetic makeup. It's not important to the greater question, all that is important is to know that at some point, no matter when that point was or what birds were involved, there was an instance when a hatched bird was a chicken that had two parents that were not chickens. At that exact event when the offspring was a chicken and the parents were not we know that the chicken was finally born. And that event had to happen unless you believe in Creationism or Intelligent Design. > I doubt that one can demarcate the non-chicken parents from the > chicken offspring. So... it is perplexing. We don't need to demarcate, we only need to know that it happened. > > > >But dwelling on the topic, the chicken egg problem is actually stated > >incorrectly to some degree, it's a more interesting question to ask: > > > > What came first? The chicken or the chicken egg? > > > >Now this question is only perplexing until you realize that the concept > >of "chicken egg" is ambiguous. Is a "chicken egg" an egg that was > >created by a chicken, or an egg from which a chicken hatches? As such, > >there are two possible answers to the age old question... > > > > Case 1: a "chicken egg" is defined by having been created > > by a chicken. > > > > In this case the chicken must have come first :) > > > > Case 2: a "chicken egg" is defined by being an egg from > > which a chicken hatches. > > > > In this case the egg comes first since the first > > genetic chicken was born from an egg created by > > it's direct ancestor that was not a chicken. > > > >See... it's not perplexing at all :) > > -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------' -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
