The egg came first

Bumping to see if this fixes brad's strange display problem

Perhaps this is just an example of the sort of parsing difficulty I mentioned above, but statement 3 appears to be an idea about legal theories, placing it in direct contradiction to statement 1. Taken as an instance of a class of questions with broader implications for the meaning of meaning it's interesting, and I've engaged in many discussions about this with various people. Whether or not I could engage YOU on it would seem to depend a lot on my ability to parse (let alone understand) your responses. I still have some reservations about that, but I think one of the things that fascinates me about the subject is the difficulty I have had in reaching firm conclusions, and I'm always hopeful that hearing it from a fresh perspective may help.Taken alone as question about theoretical biology and its truth, it's trivial -- in fact, comically so. Draw boundaries around categories in any manner you find convenient (good luck doing so without resorting to some degree of arbitrariness) but recognize that these are artificial constructs, and don't be surprised when the real-world members of those categories refuse to conform (say, by exhibiting fertility as a continuum, with occasional success in producing fertile crosses between members of what you were perfectly comfortable regarding as members of separate categories). Fail to recognize that, and it's about as interesting as watching a dog chasing his own tail; mildy amusing perhaps, but only for a short time. The question is: "which came first, the first adult YOU WOULD ACCEPT as a bona fide chicken, or the first egg YOU WOULD ACCEPT as a bona fide chicken egg?"Catholic Scientist answered it quite satisfactorily in post #2 in the thread: "it depends on your definition of a chicken egg".

Yes the chicken's egg can be defined. Do you want to try to do that an clear up this display process that is a funk?This is the only picture I have given wich starts to show how I think about the "chicken&egg" problem along animal polyphyletic lines.

@+scroll;
http://EvC Forum: Croizat Track / Wright's Isolation by distance -->EvC Forum: Croizat Track / Wright's Isolation by distance

but because one can actually read Mendel's "country" and "garden" /pollen-artifical insemination as the same "issue" it might be better to try to frame the suggestion in a broader context perhaps symbolized by the following pics, I entered for the record in the above thread, below
If you want me to evc search some of my comments on Mendel so that we can discuss the question there then fine.
The problem is that growth and development are related differently in different monophylies. Snakes never stop growing even though they can be thought to have reached full development ( with some exceptions perhaps electrotonically(I dont know)). I dont know except very abstractly and dealing with math to think of adult"" plants in the same line as adult animlas.
If you want to discuss which amphiba came first, the adults of the different kinds or the eggs sorting among the guilds, that is viable question herpetologically but I will read this thread in more detail before I just start talking about it all.If the question is the actual bird egg or a kind of bird, well, first off I am no ornithologist but I have been able to notice that one might use topobiology to mediate a claim about the extracellular matrix such that one might propose FOR BIRDS (that have at least feather reminants) that the egg definitely came first. This would be coupled with some discussion about misperceptions of playtpus as not being seen as much as a reptile as it really does appear to look at the human. But .... and here is the big "but" one must also analyze the topology of egg "layers" in mammals and relate the behavior of young climbing ON the organism in placentals to really get at the tissue.
This summer I think I might have found a short cut to this long and involved discussion which relates to lipid-proteins such that on is not hampered by the geometry of said topological conditioning but that one might reach the same text via discussion of reptile eggs and adults instead in terms of specific protein pathway expressions.Please do understand that EVC is not my life.When the topic is something I can sit down and type out an answer. then I can really do that. But when the question requires new reading and thinking on my part I do not necessarily have all that time in real time.Now, as for the problem in "parsing" my posts. Look there is no problem. Just ask away as you have been doing. If I dont have time for a particular I will tell you that. I am not hiding anything. I dont get embarassed if I missed something or dont know something.As for the apparent incongruity in my last post. ... You should be able to notice the difference in my posts as to what is simply my opinion from what I consider based simply on reading texts. While I dont, in terms of what I REALLY have to say on EVC, try to talk about , as I said, "legal theories", I have some opinions on the subject in general and perhaps in particular. What I could have said was
I am an expert on theoretical biology.
I know how to judge truth claims in that field.
I have had some experience with US Courts(local, state & federal).
What rules much of the public discussion of e/c IS about what has happened in court cases since the 70s.
What I would rather the issue be is about details of evolutionary theory that fail's students rather than changing the court representation or funding for the science...
but now I am sounding a bit opinionated and I dont like presenting my self that way,rather than having a discussion of the science involved. Am I an expert if I dont even have an undergrad degree?
Perhaps you are not really interested in the chicken and egg problem but would rather answer the question, Why did the chicken's egg cross the road?so no, i do not think that dog tail chasing is appropriate. It is simply the lack of application of groups of rotations to the common divisor in Mendel's presentation that makes the dog but not the human cross this section.

Are you familiar with the discredited concept of "species essentialism"? I haven't decided which I believe came first. I'm just not certain that its reasonable to assert that a child can somehow be of a different species than its parent, when the child obviously belongs to the same reproductive community, the same population of gene flow, as its parents. It's not clear to me that that's an appropriate assumption. The actual, nitty-gritty cause of speciation is still a subject under much scientific debate. There's several possibilities for the cause of the speciation that created Gallus gallus; for instance if the speciation was allopatric then the chicken came first; the original founding members of the new population are best described as the first chickens, despite probably being totally normal specimens of red junglefowl (the bird's immediate evolutionary ancestor). On the other hand, if the speciation was symbiogenic, then perhaps its best to consider that the egg came first.I don't think it's as cut and dry as you try to make it, and arguing that there's some arbitrary line where the offspring suddenly has enough of the characteristics of the modern chicken - i.e. the parents are 49% chicken, and their offspring is 51% chicken - smacks of species essentiallism, and really doesn't have anything to do with how we actually define and recognize species.

Are you familiar with the discredited concept of "species essentialism"? I haven't decided which I believe came first. I'm just not certain that its reasonable to assert that a child can somehow be of a different species than its parent, when the child obviously belongs to the same reproductive community, the same population of gene flow, as its parents. It's not clear to me that that's an appropriate assumption. The actual, nitty-gritty cause of speciation is still a subject under much scientific debate. There's several possibilities for the cause of the speciation that created Gallus gallus; for instance if the speciation was allopatric then the chicken came first; the original founding members of the new population are best described as the first chickens, despite probably being totally normal specimens of red junglefowl (the bird's immediate evolutionary ancestor). On the other hand, if the speciation was symbiogenic, then perhaps its best to consider that the egg came first.I don't think it's as cut and dry as you try to make it, and arguing that there's some arbitrary line where the offspring suddenly has enough of the characteristics of the modern chicken - i.e. the parents are 49% chicken, and their offspring is 51% chicken - smacks of species essentiallism, and really doesn't have anything to do with how we actually define and recognize species.

Test...AbE: Test successful. Problem was caused by hung perl processes. It is not known why they hung.This message has been edited by Admin, 09-17-2005 12:24 PM

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

hey crash,I think what bkelly is arguing is more like parent 49.9999...999% chicken, offspring 50.0000...001% ... or whatever the common diffeence is between parent and child in all species.That as you go back in the human ancestor lineage you find an arbitrary line that says "above this line is Homo sapiens, below is Homo not-sapiens" (and then further back to "above this line is Homo, below is not-Homo" or "above this line is Homonid, below is not-Homoinid" etc), and that the line is completely arbitrary at the point (year\month\day\second) that the line is "drawn" when viewed from the population living at the time.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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to share.

Of course it can. In fact, it can be done in a number of ways, just as is the case with defining "chicken" (which really is the challenge). That's the problem. Whether you apply the "biological species concept", the "morphological species concept", the "folk species concept", or any other you care to propose (genetic, paleontological, evolutionary, phylogenetic, biosystematic, whatever), you still encounter the same difficulty: it is not possible to establish the boundaries of your definition perfectly -- yet this is exactly what would be required in order to answer the question in its most rigid, literal sense. In that sense it is a question about a SINGLE chicken and a SINGLE egg. It's a philosophical question masquerading as a biological one. I have become rather involved in the EVC 'debate'; it's one of those things I sort of watch myself doing, with as much interest in understanding why I do it as in understanding the peculiar quirks of human cognition/psychology that permit the creationist/IDist to cling to his bizzare and glaringly flawed ideas. It probably has something to do with the powerlessness I have often felt when I watched people (several close to me) be "assimilated" by this parasitic, mind-sucking meme-set, and I guess I'm hoping that through practice, I may (to the extent that it is possible to do so) find ways to win some of them back. After all, the theory of evolution they reject isn't the same theory that biologists accept, but a sloppily constructed strawman sold to them by grinning preachers. One of its most glaring flaws is an underlying assumption which also serves as the basis for the ridiculous question "which came first, the chicken or the egg": that speciation is a single-step process. I may not have gotten long lines of people to follow me out of the revival tent, but I believe I have managed to disabuse one or two of them of that notion. Gotta start somewhere. None of us can realistically hope to make that claim. I mean... it may be possible to be an expert on at least some aspects of the current state of theoretical biology, but the state of theoretical biology itself has yet to reach a level of 'expertise"; in many regards, we have barely scratched the surface. Tools with sufficient power to conduct deep investigations into various unresolved areas of biology have come into our hands only within the last few decades, and much important work has barely begun, at best. With the above qualification in mind, I consider that quite possible. I think Gould touched on this (somewhere or other), pointing out that the work of dedicated amateurs has traditionally contributed much to the science of biology -- as can be said for astronomy, geology, paleontology, etc. The amateur can often benefit from a certain degree of freedom from many of the demands and constraints placed upon the professional. At this point though, some of the tunnels we've bored into the mountain of biological mystery are fairly deep, and the most important new material to be uncovered is likely to be the result of efforts on the part of the highly trained specialist who dedicates years of his life to pursuit of a specific path of investigation. There's an interesting paradox here: the deeper we dig into these mysteries, the greater the degree to which the implications of the findings are likely to be appreciable only to the highly trained specialist -- yet those same findings may have even greater import for an area outside his scope of expertise. What we need, I suppose, are individuals who are highly trained specialists in every field. But there seems to be a logical barrier to that.I dream of a world in which it is as easy to strike up a conversation with the common man you meet on the street about protein folding or transposons as it is to get him talking about football or baseball or hockey. Ask him about those, and he'll often display an appreciation for subtlety and an attention to detail that would be a credit to any biologist. Hmmm... well, maybe he IS a biologist, just in a very, VERY narrow sense. I would consider the value of asking those questions to be roughly equivalent.

Then why did you say

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good luck doing so without resorting to some degree of arbitrariness

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??Are you simply not saying that it is any different to "define" a chicken as it's egg??You are repeating yourself. You did not notice that I moved my way among the details neceesary to so circumscript the prob. If all you are going to do is repeat yourself I see no need for me to try to go through all of details necessary to explain how the EGG can be sinlged out of the population. Just because Mayr doesnt think that a population can be DEFINED doesnt mean that I can not apply Quantum compelentarity to idviduate reducts of population variance INTO an individual organism and attach an irrational number say to EACH living creature. There are finite numbers of eggs on earth but an infinte number of irrationals to label them with. I asked why Mayr did not want to do something like this and he got lost in his defesnse of speciation by geographic isolation. Naming and suffiency are two different things.Mayr attempted to use HIS OWN idea to replace a figure in Wright WHEN trying to show FISHER that he was wrong. I just say we need to EITHER electrotonicize or macrothemodynamize the SHIFTING (not one step) BALANCE of ISOLATION BY DISTANCE. that is why biogeography and geographY MUST be seperated to enable the label to be more than a tag but to actually fall beyond the phentics it also is.There is NO REASON that TheoreticalBio has only "scratched" the surface. It is only because the philosphers who came over to it were not biologists. The field was clearly visible starting say at Cambridge in 50s with Woodger to the Serbolloni conference in the 60s and 70s but because of the dispute between Thom and Crick say, the field never got higher educated than reruns of Lewontins' statments. This is as much the biologists fault as the mathematicians. There is no excuse that Creationists have "diverted" there attention or any such. They just dont think through the whole problem like might be better approved of in other countries where there is less of a tradition than the anglosaxons's.Ok, thanks for the reply at the end but still I see nothing but a restatement of your position. You said nothing about considering seeds as eggs etc. Do you know much about Topobiology?There is nothing "arbitrary" in my ambivalance conceptually as to if macrothermodyanmics or electrotonics represent the equations to applied theoretically. It will depend on the actual relative causal determinability of thermal currents vs photons etc. Which ever THEORY is used will be the immediate decision of the scientist on see the output of the data. The point is that biology unlike physics does not have MULTIPLE THEORIES from which it can experiment. Creationism opens up the mind at least to these possibilites , the two of which I mentioned are NOT creationist. There is also the ID possibility for relating data between a supernatural creator and mechanisms selectively. There is no reason that biology did not train people to think in mutiple theoretical ways for THE SAME translation in space and form making in nature.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 09-17-2005 01:18 PM

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I haven't decided which I believe came first. I'm just not certain that its reasonable to assert that a child can somehow be of a different species than its parent, when the child obviously belongs to the same reproductive community, the same population of gene flow, as its parents.

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Those who believe in ToE know that humans and chimpanzees came from a common ancestor. If, as you say, a child cannot be of a species different from its parent, then how could we possibly evolved from an ancestor that also led to chimpanzees. Indeed, if as some say, all life can be traced back to the first primitive life with DNA, then to have a descendant of a different species seems to be required.

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i.e. the parents are 49% chicken, and their offspring is 51% chicken

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Seems to me the numbers should be 99% chicken and 100% chicken.No, I am not familiar with species essentialism. I found an article but have not read it.

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I haven't decided which I believe came first. I'm just not certain that its reasonable to assert that a child can somehow be of a different species than its parent, when the child obviously belongs to the same reproductive community, the same population of gene flow, as its parents.

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Those who believe in ToE know that humans and chimpanzees came from a common ancestor. If, as you say, a child cannot be of a species different from its parent, then how could we possibly evolved from an ancestor that also led to chimpanzees. Indeed, if as some say, all life can be traced back to the first primitive life with DNA, then to have a descendant of a different species seems to be required.

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i.e. the parents are 49% chicken, and their offspring is 51% chicken

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Seems to me the numbers should be 99% chicken and 100% chicken.No, I am not familiar with species essentialism. I found an article but have not read it.

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I haven't decided which I believe came first. I'm just not certain that its reasonable to assert that a child can somehow be of a different species than its parent, when the child obviously belongs to the same reproductive community, the same population of gene flow, as its parents.

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Those who believe in ToE know that humans and chimpanzees came from a common ancestor. If, as you say, a child cannot be of a species different from its parent, then how could we possibly evolved from an ancestor that also led to chimpanzees. Indeed, if as some say, all life can be traced back to the first primitive life with DNA, then to have a descendant of a different species seems to be required.

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i.e. the parents are 49% chicken, and their offspring is 51% chicken

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Seems to me the numbers should be 99% chicken and 100% chicken.No, I am not familiar with species essentialism. I found an article but have not read it.

I don't know why you ask, nor what it is about that that you don't understand, and so am unable to respond. Well, I didn't want to say anything, but given the context, that first graphic reminded of nothing so much as the patterns I used to see on the floor of my chicken-house (yes, I actually did husband chickens at one time, and I miss having them. You can learn a lot from watching chickens. One of the things I regard as a genuine chicken-mystery is how such small brains can house so much personality, but I suppose I need to be on the alert for observer bias in this area). I didn't see the relevance of the second graphic, and still don't.Your idea:
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"...use topobiology to mediate a claim about the extracellular matrix such that one might propose FOR BIRDS (that have at least feather reminants) that the egg definitely came first."
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sounds interesting, especially in the light of your follow-up:
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"...apply Quantum compelentarity to idviduate reducts of population variance INTO an individual organism and attach an irrational number say to EACH living creature."
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So it sounds like you want to index every organism on the planet. Admirably ambitious, but I don't yet see how such a method can hope to do more than simply quantify the ambiguity through a 'fuzzy logic' approach. Maybe I'm just a bit locked-in on preconcieved ideas about the difficulty being fundamentally insurmountable. And no, I don't know much about Topobiology. Does anyone? I'm eager to learn more, though I appreciate the fact that you may have better things to do than walk me through it step-by-step. Perhaps once I've done a little more of that footwork, I will be better able to discuss those details. In the mean time, feel free to elaborate as much as your inclination inspires you and time constraints permit (I'm about due for a break myself). All I'm saying is that in order to classify an egg as either a "chicken egg" or a "non-chicken egg" it would be necessary to first define "chicken", though the wording of the question may make it less than obvious that this is the real challenge. That question, in turn, deferrs to whatever methodology is employed in arriving at answers to the broader class of questions to which it is a member: i.e;: how do we define species? Unfortunately, we seem to intuitively default to something very much like Platonic essences, which works to some degree in a practical sense despite not holding up well to thorough logical scrutiny. It is perhaps in fact because such an approach is not without a certain practical value that we are reluctant to abandon it; when biologists cannot decide what is and what is not a chicken, someone like Jedd Clampett can come along and make the call in an instant. That may happen. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that any hope of making progress in these discussions depends to some degree on a willingness to patiently go around in circles until a point of resolution is reached on whatever is currently acting as an impasse. (I'm maybe a little OCD, which probably helps). Part of the problem is the way the discussions tend to spawn tangential discussions. The only way I see to avoid that is to simply let some things drop by the wayside, and pick up anything I missed when requested to do so, such as here:I have no problem regarding seeds and eggs as functionally equivalent for the purpose of this discussion. Here, I must strongly disagree. I not only consider the role of philosophers as vital to interpretation of the scientist's findings -- at every level -- but I would be quick to point out that there are impressive gaps in our knowledge regarding the specifics of many important processes, cell differentiation and protein folding being only the first two that come to mind.