Comment on Chicken vs Egg

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Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The act of giving it a name is irrelevant.

The distinction between “chicken” and “egg” is biologically irrelevant: they both refer to the same organism. The terms are descriptive, not prescriptive. The organism will progress the same way, regardless of what we decide to say about it.

The chicken/egg argument is purely one of semantics. “Giving it a name” isn’t just relevant to the discussion, it is the only factor relevant to the discussion.

The way you would have us describe the egg prevents us from accurately and consistently defining an egg. An egg laid by a chicken could mature into a new species, and by your arguments, should be described as an egg of that new species.

This creates a linguistic uncertainty in any case where the egg’s potential is not and cannot be known. Is there a Shicken egg among the dozen you bought? A Blargleblat egg? Do you have the eggs of a dozen new evolutions with a common chicken ancestor? You cannot say with certainty.

However, if we describe the egg as the product of the creature that laid it, we have no such uncertainty. If we describe it as the possession of the offspring within it, we have no such uncertainty. The uncertainty only arises when we try to define it by an unknowable condition that may or may not occur.

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