h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK.

No hard feelings Gnomon the hungry; when uttering deep truths there is no way of getting it right.

well, if this entry gets in to the EG then they may as well get rid of the WG.

Spook, you've made your point before, and the rest of us don't agree with you.

what a lot of fanatism for such a nice entry!

Alas for Gnomon, and to the joy(?) of some others, I have a separate view.
In the entry is spoken only of (micro) evolution of a protochicken resulting in the not yet breeding-enhanced true chicken, but the egg is considered a constant during this evolution.
There is another possibility, as eggs did not start as chicken eggs millions of years ago, but had their own evolution.
As a counter balance I state that originally birds undistinguisable on the outside from chickens laid eggs that were just not chicken eggs, until some time ago a internally slightly changed chicken was hatched that lay a real chicken egg.
So the chicken came first.

Would this make the entry more balanced?

Good try, Marjin, but I don't think it's right. The DNA of the new individual is determined when the egg is fertilised, so the new individual is an egg before it is a chicken. So the mutant first chicken, descendant of a proto-chicken was a mutant egg before it was a mutant chicken.

I am not sure.
The proto-egg is built by the proto-chicken, and has a mutant real chicken developing inside.

So what you see is a 'standard' proto-chicken laying a proto-egg, and bingo! appears the new chicken.

Actually I always used your arguments, but the stupid discussion caused me to try this alternative, and I like it when it returns the answer to 'unsolvable', but now with good reasons

The shell of the egg isn't alive. It's made by the proto-chicken. But everything inside the egg is part of the new chicken and has the DNA of the chicken, starting out as a single cell with one set of DNA, then splitting. So the new mutant chicken starts being a mutant in the egg, at the moment of fertilisation.

That still leaves my explanation as possible.

Suppose the only difference between a proto-chicken and a real chicken is the outside of the eggs they lay....

Oh heavens, can we stop raking over the embers of the arguments we've had? The entry is quite nice as it stands.

"The shell of the egg isn't alive." Now Gnomon -- what has that to do with which came first?

I am pretty sure if you showed me a protochicken I couldn't tell it from a chicken. This is not science you're writing here, it's educational fiction.

It's getting to look more like the strong agnostics have it. The answer cannot be determined because the question cannot be defined. Trick question -- it looks grammatical but it has impossibly slippery reference.

Now who can tell which came first: science or fiction? They're different now, but once they weren't. I don't expect a good answer.

Where's that smiley when you need one?

Hello Everyone.

In posting 94 I asked "The entry relies on the tacit assumption that an egg is a chicken's egg. Should this really be made explicit?". Did that question ever get addressed?

I agree with the recent posting that this thread has started to play like a broken record. The entry has only 254 words and we now have over 100 postings in PR. Is this some kind of record?

In the title of the thread is the A number. When PR threads get any longer than 20 postings, the link to the article, present in posting 1, is then lost. Does anyone agree with me that it would be nice if a link to the proposed entry remained easily available in the thread - perhaps by having the link in the title, and the title uneditable? That might help to prevent holy wars developing.

A2026072

Personally I think this would be better off in the Underguide or the Post. I don't think it offers enough information for the Edited Guide. Just my opinion mind you!

I don't agree with FM's recent comment about raking through old arguments. Marjin was making a new point which had not been addressed before.

So far, there have been four basic attacks on this entry:

The "Equal Time for Creationists" from NuclearConfusion.

The "Evolution is not a proven" from Spook.

The philosophical approach, from Recumbentman.

The biology attack from Marjin.

I think the first three have been dealt with.

Old Hairy,

The question "Which came first, the chicken or the fish egg" is easily answered and is trivial. The question only becomes interesting if it is "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg". It is this question that is being addressed. But you may be right, I should probably state it explicitly.

I was trying to damp down the argument to get people *off* your back and this article *into* the Guide, you daft sod! Oh well, some people just *can't* be helped...

>The question only becomes interesting if it is "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg".<

That raises a whole new debate;

Is a chicken egg an egg laid by a chicken or one that contains an embryo chicken?

F S

OK, I've thought about all the objections to the entry, and in the light of all of them...

I'm leaving the entry as it is.


This isn't just stonewalling. THe real situation is very slightly more complicated than outlined in the entry:

Protochicken forms unfertilised protochicken egg inside herself.
This egg is fertilised. The DNA from both parents combine and mutate in doing so, creating the DNA of the first chicken, inside the egg.
The protochicken lays the egg.
The chicken hatches out of the egg.

I think this is adequately summarised in the entry, although it doesn't go into all that detail. So I'm happy with the entry as it stands.

Good. Now perhaps we can put this baby to bed at last!