from an evolutionary 'historic' perspective the 'egg' (and sperm) preceded the cellular aggregates

Really? 'egg' and 'sperm' are rather specialized cell types, thus part of a 'cellular aggregate'...

So it seems to me that your exposition of evolution history is yet another shift of viewpoint (as dino/egg, turtle/egg, fish/egg, ...) containing the same problem:

Egg+Sperm<->Multicellular_Organisms
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To solve the chicken/egg puzzle we first have to put both terms on the same level. "Chicken" is a specialized term, "Egg" is general, so establishing "firstness" of chicken and egg is like comparing apple and fruit.

So, let's just talk about 'chicken' and 'chicken egg'. There's the reasoning that the first chicken egg was laid by a creature which itself was not a chicken. Later, a chicken hatched from that egg.

But until the chicken hatched, the egg was not a chicken egg, but an ordinary non-chicken egg. The non-chicken egg became a chicken egg at the moment the chicken hatched from it, not before. If it already had been a chicken egg, because it contained a chicken, then the egg was formed as a container of the chicken, and the chicken was formed as content of it's chicken egg.

They both came into existence at the moment the chickenness of the chicken-egg's chicken and the chicken-eggness of the chicken's chicken-egg could clearly be established beyond doubt.

That's why chicken and egg are one, and there's no "first" in chicken nor egg...

Name them, and they are. In principio erat verbum.

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update: sorry - double post (I must have doubleclicked the send btn. --- Post deleted.
allan

Well, I was commenting on egg+spermatozoa (oogamy) being an evolutionary ancient mechanisms for sexual reproduction traceable back to the protista (way before multicellular organisms, such as T.Rex or chickens).

This is a broad evolutionary angle on the egg/chicken question (which I find interesting),

All sexually reproducing organisms derive from a common ancestor which was a single celled eukaryotic species. Many protists reproduce sexually. . .

If the egg is not necessarily of any specific type: Then it could be said that the egg came first, because other animals had been laying eggs long before chickens existed. In biology, egg is used as a general term in this way.

A more narrow speciation angle (which seems to be what you are driving at) could argue that

The modern chicken was believed to have descended from another closely related species of birds, the red junglefowl, but recently discovered genetic evidence suggests that the modern domestic chicken is a hybrid descendant of both the red junglefowl and the grey junglefowl... Assuming the evidence bears out, a hybrid is a compelling scenario that the egg came before the chicken.

allan
(in the beginning was energy, evolving (given time and negative entropy) to egg, chicken -- and in the end : a lot of words... :)

A more narrow speciation angle (which seems to be what you are driving at)

No, what I was driving at is the timelessness of being and wording (related to what jdporter wrote)

(in the beginning was energy, evolving (given time and negative entropy) to egg, chicken -- and in the end : a lot of words... :)

I personally believe wonder why there isn't any serious research investigating the linkage between love (which is the highest (and source of all) energy, as we all know) and energy as physicians understand it...

--shmem

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