Paradox of egg and hen

The Paradox of egg and the hen is one of oldest and most representative of the vicious circles: What appeared in first: the egg or the hen?

It is made by it mention for the first time in the Milindapañha.

Paradox

Historically, this dilemma initially seemed a Paradoxe. The situation is really paradoxical if one postulates:

* the age of the universe is finished

* any hen is born from a hen egg.

If one understands by egg of hen , an egg laid by a hen; one can then show by the absurdity, the inexistence of hen, since the infinite ascent of a hen would exceed the age of the universe.

It is thus necessary to reject one or the other of the premises. For the creationnists, as for the partisans of the Theories of the evolution, it is necessary to denounce the second premise. On the other hand, creationnists and in favor of the theories of the evolution diverge on the answer to the question.

Answers of the creationnists

For the creationnists, it is about a rather futile question of Cosmogonie: the Créateur has it creates egg or hen, even both? If one refers to the Genèse, it should rather be considered that God (Yahvé) created hen (including the cock): God created large fish and all the live animals which are driven, and which water produced in abundance according to their species; it created also any winged bird according to its species. God saw that was bon.

Thus, the hen preceded egg.

Answers of the scientists

However according to the actual position of the Science, this paradox is null and void. For the partisans of the theories of the evolution, an living being is not born from an identical living being exactly . Thus “any hen is not born inevitably from a hen egg”. On the other hand a hen remains a hen with the blossoming.

Thus the egg preceded the hen.

More concretely, the birds are " Dinosaur S transformés" and specialized. Thus coarsely, the first hen is hatched of an egg of dinosaur. But insofar as the dinosaurs were oviparous animals, that does nothing but move the problem: What appeared in first: the egg or the dinosaur?

Ultimately, the question becomes fuzzy: “Which is the origin of egg, of the Sexualité, the life? ” and science offers few brief replies…

To this first prompt response, one can give two outlines of more succeeded answers:

Traditional causal approach

First approach and the easiest changing of semantics: one can discuss the direction given to the word “egg”, to even discuss the concept of “hen”.

If one sticks to the concept of the most general egg, then it is clear that the egg appeared a few hundreds of million years before hen. The fish laid eggs at one time when did not exist yet the least hen, and later the dinosaurs laid eggs calcified like those of a hen.

An alternative of the same series pretends to raise the paradox while requiring which definition one adopts for “egg”: an egg laid by a hen ? or like an egg giving rise to a hen ? The hen precedes it in the first case (by definition) whereas it follows it in the second (by definition also).

There is no more paradox if egg is defined as what is at the same time laid by a hen and giving rise to a hen. In fact, the first egg of hen , owing to the fact that it was the first, was necessarily laid by another animal that a hen, without what it would not be the first hen egg, but at best the second. In this case, the egg precedes hen, but by simple consequence of a definition ad hoc .

ecosystemic Approach

On the long run, while utilizing time and evolution: one day, the hens were distinguished from a former species (one could name it proto-hen ). One then finds the paradox of bearded the: starting from which level of difference does consider one that the hen is distinguished from proto-hen?

The bottom of the paradox is the existence of situations where each element seems at the same time a result and a condition of the unit. It is this observation which will lead to the systemic, bearing reflection on the articulation between the whole (the cycle hen-egg) and the parts (the hen, the egg).

In fact, like often, the paradox is based on a certain confusion between two levels (in fact, of the levels of generation): there is the level where the egg generates the hen, which itself generates egg, etc And then there is the level where a former system (proto-hen and proto-egg) generates the following system (hen and egg). Once this made distinction, it has there no more paradox.

A possible good answer is that the couple egg-hen (a kind of attractile) nearly simultaneously appeared, generated by a former system which of it was not very distant. It is in conformity with our current knowledge on the matter.

In addition, in the circular logic of recursions of the ecosystemic approach, it is also about a question of " ponctuation" of a cutting in privileged interval of a sequence continues where the hen led to egg is as exact as egg with hen. Most wretched of the quarrels is that of a difference in punctuation where each one is persuaded of its own bona fide and the dirty bad faith of the other. This also refers to the family systemic Thérapies of the Paradoxes and double constraint.

The egg preceded hen

Two English, a philosopher and a scientist, claim to have solved this mystery. John Brookfield of the University of Nottingham, specialist in evolutionary genetics, and David Papineau, philosophical of sciences of King' S college of London, are formal. The egg preceded hen.

Their thesis: knowing that the genetic material does not evolve/move during the life of a living organism, the first bird with becoming a hen initially had to exist as an embryo inside an egg.

Papineau increases: “The first chicken had to leave an egg laid by another species. But it was well a hen egg

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