A new theoretical answer to the old question “Which came first, the chicken of the egg?” conflicts with the answer produced by an experiment in 2003.
A May 26 CNN report describes the theoretical conclusion:
Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg…. Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, told the UK Press Association the pecking order was clear.
The experiment, which showed the chicken arriving first, was reported in the July/August 2003 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. Alice Shirrell Kaswell described her work:
Which came first ? the chicken of the egg? I tackled the question experimentally, using a chicken, an egg, and the United States Postal Service (USPS).
I mailed the chicken and the egg, each in its own separate packaging, and kept careful track of when each shipment was sent from a post office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and when it subsequently arrived at its intended destination in New York City….
Kaswell’s article came came to a prophetic conclusion:
It has now been empirically determined that the chicken came first, the egg second.
However, seeing the history of previous questions that were taken up first by philosophers and only later by scientists, I am loath to predict that these results ? clear as they are ? will settle the question to everyone?s satisfaction.
(Thanks to investigator Erik Pettersson for bringing the new theoretical work to our attention.)