Hen or egg?
The age-old question of which came first, the hen or the egg, goes like this …
Consider first a hen, scratching its head and pondering its own existence. If the hen came first, did it appear out of thin air? Surely not, there must have been an egg it hatched from!
Now look at the second scenario: the egg came first. Where did it come from? Did it fall from the sky like a meteorite? Surely not. It needed a hen to be laid, after all!
While the question of which came first, the hen or the egg, may seem like an unsolvable riddle at first glance, the root of the problem lies in our tendency to shift our focus from one egg to another.
In the first scenario, we focus on a specific hen and assume the egg it hatched from must have existed first. In the second scenario, we shift our focus to the egg that the hen laid and realize that the hen had to exist first before it could lay an egg.
By doing so, we create a loop-de-loop that appears to have no clear answer. However, if we stay focused and avoid this error, we can easily unravel this mystery.
In fact, there are only four possible relationships between an egg and a hen.
a) If we focus on a specific hen and the egg it hatched from, then the egg came first.
b) If we focus on a specific egg and the hen that laid it, then the hen came first.
c) If we're considering a hen and an egg that are not related in either of these ways, then we can easily determine which came first based on their individual "hatching" moments.
d) If we're talking about chickens and eggs in general, then we know that eggs have been around for millions of years, long before chickens even existed. So in that sense, the egg definitely came first.
While the answer to the question "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" may seem elusive, it is in fact quite simple. There's no need to get too scrambled about this puzzle.