This really doesn't look like an encyclopedia article to me. --Larry Sanger
I agree that it doesn't look like an encyclopedia article - but the content is certainly interesting and perhaps useful so I think it should stay (in one form or another). --User:SteveBaker.
The reason I put it on here was because I believe that it has become firmly incorporated into the English langauage. - Jamesbrowne
Well, the pseudo-problem, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is a common bit of folk wisdom (or whatever you want to call it). Maybe there should be an article about it. But the current article at The Chicken or the Egg just doesn't look like an encyclopedia article at all--that's my problem. I don't know quite what to do with it. --LMS
Maybe start an entry on Folk conundrum / Folk conundrums and make The Chicken or the Egg a sub-page?
Other examples: -fish or cut bait? -sh-- or get off the pot? -sh--, pi--, or go blind?
If there's a known history to it, I think that would definitely give it a push towards being page-worthy. I don't know that the less common interpretation is worth being mentioned, though. --Belltower
Why i removed the tables
the poitn where not conceptually paralel enough to break wikipedia standard layout. If this came to print it would mess everything.--Zero00 23:08, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Am I wrong?
I think the article is great - whether or not it's written like an encyclopedia article or not, it still contains useful and interesting information so is fine with me.
I have a quesiton though -
lets assume that chickens did indeed evolve from red junglefowl. Lets also avoid defining 'a chicken' and 'an egg'. Can't we just say that there was a proto-chicken, an egg and then a chicken (in that order). You don't need to define a chicken as 'something that lays chicken eggs', or define a chicken egg as 'something from which a chicken hatches' - they don't seem to me to be well-defined enough definitions (which is why you get the catch-22 in the first place).
So I say the egg came first. Is there a killer mistake in my logic?
Well, maybe
The difficulty lies not with "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" - but with The first sentence under the caption "Common viewpoint" which narrows the problem by saying:
"The egg is assumed to be a chicken egg."
So now, we have: "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken-egg?" - now you DO have to carefully define what is meant by 'chicken' and 'chicken-egg'...which is why I wrote the "And Another" section which (I believe) resolves the problem even if "the egg" is required to be a chicken egg.
The article should be more encyclopedic
I actually really like this article, but agree that it should be fixed up... The article seems to repeat istelf in a couple places, and it really needs to be written in a more formal style, and with descriptive titles, rather than "and yet another theory". But I feel that the general content is good, and if some references and history of the phrase itself (that being what the article is about!) were added, this article could be quite nicely wikified. Oracleoftruth 15:36, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
List of points
I don't currently have time to completely update the article right now, but, in the interests of getting things more organized and giving others a chance to comment before I re-organize the actual article, I've come up with a better way of sorting and titling most of the points that are mentioned in the article...
-- With no definition, the egg came first - dinosuars laid eggs long before chickens existed.
-- To make the problem work, the "egg" must be considered to be a "chicken egg".
- If you define a chicken egg as an egg that contains a chicken, the egg came first.
- If you define a chicken egg as an egg that was laid by a chicken, the chicken cames first.
-- The paradox can only exist if you define a chicken egg as and egg that both contains and was laid by a chicken.
-- However, in order for the paradox to arise, a "chicken" must also be defined.
The same idea can be applied to the chicken -
- If you define a chicken as a creature which lays chicken eggs, the chicken cames first.
- If you define a chicken as a creature which hatched from a chicken egg, the egg came first.
-- The paradox arises only if all four of the definitions are applied.
I don't think the article should include the thing about "the chicken came first - in this sentence" because I don't feel it to be a perticularly useful or interesting point...
Thoughts, anyone?Oracleoftruth 15:54, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
Changed my stucture somewhat, added new ideas. I think that pretty much covers everything said in the article, only in clearer words... Unless anyone has any comments, I'll start re-organizing the article. Oracleoftruth 02:02, May 30, 2005 (UTC)
Changed, reorganized, and maybe even encyclopedized.
So yeah, I went through and changed all that, perhaps it's "clean" now. As the one who did the latest editing, though, I don't presume to be able to judge that. Nevertheless, the usefulness of the article has, I think, been preserved, the whole thing has been organized, and the tone of the article has been made into less of a lengthy (if funny) speech and more of an explanation of the possibilities for logical interpretation and misenterpretation of the phrase. And hopefully it is still funny on its own merit.
And to think that I started out the night reading the article on intelligent design (the philosophy/theology, not a how-to).
Reedited based on probable wording problems of my own
After seeing the most recent edit of the introductory section, and comparing it with how I worded it originally, I see where the problem was- it was my ambiguous wording of how the discussion itself fits into Plutarch's work, and what I was trying to say about the origin of the problem probably being older even than the Moralia. This led to an inaccurate, but understandable, rewording by the previous contributor. Hopefully this is now more clear.
- Yeah, I see what you were trying to say with it now.
The chicken came first
If the egg is one that came from a chicken AND hatches a chicken, the chicken STILL came first because the egg that the first chicken hatched from was not laid by a chicken. the chicken wins. yay!