There has been some hubbub regarding this extraordinarily rich philosophical controversy. Rather than make a hundred different responses, I thought it better to make this post.

Some may recognize Raffaelo's "School at Athens", which hangs in the Vatican Museum. Notice that Plato (14) points upward, toward transcendence, Aristotle (15) points down to the material realm. He was not a materialist, he held to a transcendent god, though finite. Neither could have accepted the crass materialism of today... But this painting came to mind on the occasion of the chicken and egg controversy. There are materialists among us who if we had to represent them in this painting, they'd be groveling on the dusty floor (of materialism) under Aristotle's feet!

There is need to clarify the sense of the question, "Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?". I ask the question of existence, not the how-it-comes-about regarding the sexual reproduction of chickens, a far less interesting topic.

So let's try it again...

Which Comes First: The Chicken Or The Egg?

Let’s look at some possible answers. The chicken is total origin of the egg!

The chicken comes first. This is to say, ALL that is in the egg comes from the chicken, and from nothing else!

There is nothing in the egg that does not come from the chicken. The rooster does not contribute anything to the egg.

The water and feed the hen takes in do not contribute anything to the existence of the egg.

The wholesome environment contributes nothing to the egg.

Nor the chicken coop.

Nor the box/nest in which the hen lays the egg.

All being in the egg comes to it only and exclusively from the hen.

And the air she breathes to stay alive, to be able to lay the egg, the hen provides even that for herself too, so that she can lay her egg. For all the existence in that egg comes only from the chicken, which means that the chicken has to be her own "providence" and "God" to provide all that being.

And what about time and place: is the “history” of the chicken also contained in the being of the chicken, so that she may bequeath to the egg time and space? The place of the chicken farm, the locale, municipality, the state and country: are these, too, inside the hen? If the matter is pressed, yes! Imparting existence is imparting all the aspects of existence!

Does absolutely EVERYTHING that the chicken egg needs to exist come only from that poor hen that lays it?

Yes and again, yes!

Then that poor hen is the eternal God! (I better state right away, that I reject this, lest I get carted away.)

(This is thinking metaphysically, not like an engineer. Many answered the question as if it were about a mere physical/chemical process. The question was about the origin of existence as such. The answer must address all levels of being, or be short and incomplete.)

There are other ways of turning the poor hen into God.

What if I answer the question, “The chicken comes first and the egg is a technology of the chicken!”?

But that does nothing but extend the question into this next one: Does that technology come entirely from the being of the chicken? If yes, again, the chicken is God!, containing all she needs within herself to produce the reality of the egg and the reality in which the egg exists (and without which, the egg could not exist).

What if I answer the question, “The chicken “evolves” the egg ”?

As with the “technology” response, this answer does not address the question of the origin about the total existence and being of the egg. If the technology is contained in the chicken, then the chicken is turned into “God”: it is turned into the fount of all reality!

And if we tag the technology with another label, such as “evolution” or “hocus pocus and abracadabra”, the result is the same: either it’s contained in the hen or it is not.

All answers lead to this safe statement: Either the chicken is God or the chicken is not God.

If we want to attribute to the poor hen all the creativity and life and being that is given in the existence of that egg, whether we label these things “evolution” or “technology” or “blind luck”, these remain in the chicken and the chicken is turned into the origin and fount of reality not only of the egg, but of what the egg in its total existence implies, namely, the rest of reality! (The egg does not get laid in another galaxy, or in any other place but one particular box and coop on one particular farm. All these determinations are part of its existing as egg.)

But, if we agree that the chicken contributes only some of its reality to that egg, then we have admitted that there preexists a reality supplying the rest of the requisite reality necessary for the existence of the egg; a preexistent reality common to both chicken and egg, NOT CONTAINED inside the chicken, therefore transcending the chicken, and which is necessary condition for the existence of the egg, and for the differences of egg and chicken in their common sameness. A reality that cannot be all inside the hen (or the egg)!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the metaphysical induction that the Principle of Metaphysical Induction requires for the coexistence of different realities! As the chicken and the egg are different, there must preexist a common sameness by which they’re being different is possible.

Let’s look at another possible answer. The egg is total origin of the chicken!

Do I have to elaborate again about technology or evolution or pure chance? If the reader insist... these are either in the egg or not. If all are in the egg, then the egg is the total and only fount of the reality of the chicken. The egg is “God”, fount of all the reality of both chicken and all the reality in which the chicken comes embedded so as to be chicken. A strong thing to say about the best fresh-laid egg.

It’s more reasonable to say that whatever gives origin to that hen, it is not all in the egg alone. Some of it must be independent of the existence of the egg, transcend the egg... It is therefore a metaphysical induction which I am compelled to make so as to avoid calling either egg or hen the fount of all reality. I would like to be a little less theistic than that! Perhaps there’s an atheist who can agree with me?

Another problem: If I choose as total origin either egg or hen, I annihilate the difference between the chicken and the egg.

Of course, I reject both choices of chicken coming first or egg coming first. That’s a shell game, I believe I have shown that.

But either answer is absurd for another reason. If all the egg’s being is already in the hen, then what difference is there between hen and chicken? None, they’ve fused into the chicken-egg: something never seen or heard of in nature. We might recognize the animal species of chicken on another plain or in another order of reality, somehow “above”, “transcending” the individual egg and individual hen. That is “spiritual”, perhaps uncomfortably "spiritual" for some readers, but it makes more sense and has the merit of not contradicting our experience of reality.

On the other hand, compressing the being of the egg into the hen, or the being of the hen into the egg destroys their real difference, and violates the empiric data and sense experience of these two really different realities.

There is no other reasonable answer to the conundrum: neither the chicken nor the egg come first, but rather, a preexistent third must come before the coexistence of chicken and egg, so that their differences can coexist.

I, and I dare say, we, must recognize that hen and egg are different. And if we are to be honest, we cannot compress or suppress these differences into one or the other. We must attribute to a preexistent third the contribution of being to the egg, which cannot be attributed to the hen without 1) annihilating the difference between the chicken and the egg, and 2) turning one of these into the “fount of reality”.

And what I say of chicken and egg, I say of any two distinct realities: a common third must preexist them or their coexisting, real differences would be suppressed or rendered absurd (the chicken is God? Right!).

As for the rest, I can refer the doubtful reader, for whom TRANSCENDENCE is a challenging concept, to my recent posting:

https://steemit.com/onemanyproblem/@apollonius/climbing-mount-everest-with-metaphysical-induction-part-1

I include the most relevant portion right below.

Cheers!

Can Diogenes's Principle Really Be True?

I leave these historical considerations on the origins of the Principle of the One and the Many, and refocus onto its philosophical dimension. Here again is Diogenes's Principle:

If things are different, then they must (in some sense) be the same (or one)!

Correctly interpreted, this snippet of a phrase contains the essence of the Principle of Metaphysical Induction. At most, it seems a clever aphorism, and it could easily be overlooked as silly or flippant. I want to test it's mettle, press it to see if it can hold up under aggressive scrutiny.

A frog in a scummy pond and a star in the crystalline sky seem quite different. They belong to entirely different worlds. So different that they can't have anything in common, right? So let's suppose they have absolutely nothing in common. What follows?

As they have nothing in common, it is impossible for any common thing to be present in the universe of each. If a cloud exists in the frog's sky, and that cloud also exists in the star's sky, we have a violation of our assumption. That cloud must exist either in the frog's universe or in the star's universe. And the sky: is it not both the frog's and the star's? Of course. But now the sky, too, must either belong to the frog's universe or belong to the star's universe, or be torn asunder, half going to the star, half going to the frog. Absurd? It gets worse. The mind with which I am thinking of both star and frog is also something they have in common ! Now it is my mind that must be torn asunder to be consistent with our assumption.

So if there exist two realities, frog and star, or more generally, "X" and "Y", that are absolutely diverse and separate, having absolutely nothing in common, then each must exist in its own absolutely separate universe in which each thing in one universe does not exist and cannot exist in the other. This is absolute diversity, and its consequences are (1) to isolate each finite being in its own solipsism (from Latin, solum + ipsum, "alone by itself"), and (2) to destroy the mind's capacity to form a cognitive relation with both frog and star, X and Y. Hence two more consequences follow immediately. (1) Being is annihilated. The being of the frog (X) is annihilated. Why? Being resists nothingness. Being is anything insofar as it is an effective presence. Now clearly, the frog (X) is neither a presence nor effective, clearly it has not resisted nothingness but absurdly imploded by its "touch" (another absurdity, nothingness in this case would be transmuted into being, an effective presence!).
(2) Thinking in my mind both the frog and the star is absolutely impossible. It's obvious that under the assumption of the existence of absolute differences between things, my mind could at most form a cognitive relation with one of the two solipsistic universes and its contents.
(3) The separation between frog and star is necessarily eternal.

I object: even if the two solipsistic universes and all their contents are absolutely diverse, having absolutely nothing in common now, they could change and find some sameness in the future.

Really? Can being ever approach absolute nothingness? No, because they have nothing in common, approaching would mean they have a common place to meet. As contradictory, they must remain contradictory under penalty of not being contradictory: and that's contradictory!

Hence, it is absolutely impossible that frog and star be absolutely different or diverse (I use difference and diverse as synonyms for the time being). Therefore, there must be something in common and one upon which depends their coexistence and possible interacting. Furthermore, on the metaphysical plain, there cannot exist any solipsistic universe, eternally separated from "the rest of Reality".
This, I believe, sufficiently establishes Diogenes's Principle. Oneness and sameness, therefore have precedence and are necessary conditions for multiplicity and differences.

Enough said about the history of metaphysical induction. I just wanted to sketch the background to give an idea of the idea's originality.

The Metaphysical Induction

I talked of a frog and a star, and then of a real thing X and another Y. If X is different or diverse from Y, and Y similarly with respect to X, this much is absolutely true, both for being and for our thinking: It is metaphysically impossible for X and Y to be absolutely diverse one from the other.

Therefore, the absolutely necessary condition for X and Y to be diverse or different is that something common between X and Y preexist, so that they can coexist as diverse. Let us call that common sameness, "C", which must preexist the diversity and difference between X and Y.

Now these are some of the ramifications for C:

(1) C exists, that is, it resists nothingness and is an effective presence.

(2) C exists as it makes X and Y exist: without C, neither X nor Y would be effective presences by being diverse or different from one another.

(3) C is "split" into two aspects: some of its being is in X and Y, and some is in C alone.

(4) But C is not internally divided by this "split". If it were, its being would be circumscribed ("trapped") within X and/or Y, and so C would not be able to act as a commonness between their diversities or differences. We would be back where we started under the assumption that X and Y were absolutely different, in two absolutely solipsistic universes. But we've seen that such a state is impossible both for being and for thinking of them (it would split the mind in two!).

(5) C is a oneness or a sameness.

If X and Y correspond to two organs in a living body, then C as the body is a oneness (for X and Y are not divided from C, the body). On the other hand, if X and Y represent two hens in the C of the whole species of chickens, then X and Y are divided, yet enjoy the sameness of being of the same species.

(6) C is transcendent.

C exercises its being "at a distance", that is, in itself as C, and also in X and Y; furthermore, X and Y depend on C for their being, as I noted in (2). Therefore C transcends X and Y. Its being unfolds and radiates from a "deeper" level of being than X and Y, C does not depend on X and Y. If it does, then they may be codependent, and "co-transcendent". Keep in mind the "transcend" comes from Latin: trans (across) + eo (go) = to go across. The being of C "goes across" from itself into X and Y, and back into C. That is what the term "transcendent" seems to depict. Later, I'll pick up this thread when I speak of "dynamism".

(7) A hierarchy of being is implied: as X and Y depend on C (if not in an equal co-dependence).

(8) The transcendence of being is necessary for the existence of being and thinking by the mind.

Why? If there were no transcendence, C would be "split" between X and Y, the diversity of X and Y would vanish, and X and Y would cease to be. The mind could not have commonness with both of them, and so, could not reach both without splitting itself.