Argument
Chicken or the egg
Overview
The chicken or the egg causality dilemma is commonly stated as the question, "which came first: the chicken or the egg?" The dilemma stems from the observation that all chickens hatch from eggs and all chicken eggs are laid by chickens. "Chicken-and-egg" is a metaphoric adjective describing situations where it is not clear which of two events should be considered the cause and which should be considered the effect, to express a scenario of infinite regress, or to express the difficulty of sequencing actions where each seems to depend on others being done first. Plutarch posed the question as a philosophical matter in his essay "The Symposiacs", written in the 1st century CE.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Now nothing can be perfected by or want that which as yet is not. Everybody sees that eggs have the nature of a concretion or consistence in some animal or other, but want those organs, veins, and muscles which animals enjoy.
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
States what Chicken or the egg is; the author is tied to Chicken or the egg in the knowledge graph.
Others say that the cuckoo, being the stronger bird, kills those that are brought up with it. 3. The cuckoo appears to act prudently in thus depositing her egg; for it is conscious of its own timidity, and that it cannot defend its young, and therefore places them under the protection of another bird, in order that they may be preserved; for this bird is very cowardly, and when it is pecked by even small birds, it…
Aristotle, Aristotle's History of Animals In Ten Books
The author is tied to Chicken or the egg in the knowledge graph.
To certain facts, certain facts always do, and, as we believe, will continue to, succeed. The invariable antecedent is termed the cause; the invariable consequent, the effect. And the universality of the law of causation consists in this, that every consequent is connected in this manner with some particular antecedent, or set of antecedents. Let the fact be what it may, if it has begun to exist, it was preceded by…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Chicken or the egg is.
Related ideas
- Anaximander
- Moralia
- Macrobius
- Plutarch
- Infinite regress
- Age of Enlightenment
- Aristotle
- Time (magazine)
- Bible
- Unmoved mover
- Causality
- Evolutionary biology
- Evolution
- Mother Nature Network
Place in the tradition
Part of Nihilism.