Here is why you couldn't find an answer, yet.
Plutarch, (46 - c. 120)
Most everyone is familiar with the mind teaser, ”Which came first the Chicken or the egg?” While it seems contemporary, the question was first posed 2000 years ago by the Greek philosopher, Plutarch. The question – and its answer - was considered quite serious and important because it deals with whether or not the universe and life have a beginning.
In our worldly experience, everything seems to have a cause and an effect. Something causes something else to happen. The Dog wags her tail which knocks down the vase of flowers which spills water on the floor which causes the Dog’s guardian to slip and fall which causes the second Dog to bark, and so on - a simple chain of causes and effects. But, what came before that? We might be able to keep going back to find earlier and earlier causes but at some point, like the Greeks, we are stuck with the question: What came before the universe?
“Time is a mystery from a scientific point of view. The past is gone and the future has not yet happened, and the present as the point between past and future immediately ceases to exist – or it is possible to question whether it ever existed at all.”
Evolutionary biologists think that they have solved the dilemma. They claim it was the egg who came first and did so through mutation. In other words, a non-Chicken laid an egg that was somehow genetically changed to produce the first Chicken. But, physics says otherwise.
We usually take time as a given, that it is real and flows in succession. But, quantum physicist David Bohm called time a “mystery.” Indeed, he asserted, the passage of time, from past, present, and future only exist as an assumed image or thought. “The world-line (history) of a Chicken in spacetime is comprised of a series of continuous spacetime events. This is called the "block" picture of the universe, “(Perelman, 2020). The Chicken (past) who laid the egg (present) who becomes the Chicken (future) are one and the same. Our perception of time’s directionality, moving from the past towards the future is not grounded in reality, but (mis)informed by our belief in a fixed sense of self. Furthermore, quantum physics’ retrocausality implies that the Chickens and eggs of today can send information to the past thereby changing who their predecessors could be and might have been.
According to Bohm, the world we experience around us, the eggs, Chickens, and ourselves, only appear separate but are actually explicit manifestations of a deeper implicit order. As he describes, “Take for example all the experience of ourselves that we have at the ordinary level, in which I include all the various kinds of thoughts, images and sensations with which we identify. Now ordinarily we say, tacitly, that that is me. But that is really only an explicit image of something much more subtle and enfolded.”
Venn diagrams representing the specific and overlapping proteins identified in the human (during the whole gestation) and chicken (11th day of incubation) amniotic fluid (AF). Human AF data were obtained from the work of Cho et al., (11), which combines results from nine publications (supplemental Data S3, sheet #3).
So when contemplating the Chicken-egg conundrum, quantum mechanics frames it in a very different way by demonstrating that we each emerge from life’s intrinsic, implicit wholeness, but are forever entangled, not just connected to each other, but we profoundly affect one and another. The egg that you hold in your hand was generated by the same wholeness from which you were generated. You and the egg are deeply entangled in the universe.
Physics is not the only science to recognize patterns of continuity which underlie and cohere all of us. Neuroscience does not delve into the implicit, invisible realms which quantum physics reveals, however, it describes the continuity in the explicit, tangible world.
Chickens, humans, Fish, and all other Animals possess common brains and capacities to feel, think, and experience the rainbow of emotions that make life so rich. We may look different on the outside, feathered versus naked skin, beaks versus noses and mouths, etc, but inside we share the same brain structures and processes which govern consciousness.
As we have learned from the recent convergence of global crises, to harm or destroy, abuse or kill an egg or Chicken, is the same as abusing and killing ourselves. As Shakespeare’s Danish Prince once admonished his friend, “There’s more to Chickens and eggs, Horatio, than dreamt in your philosophy.”
Gay Bradshaw, PhD, PhD, Executive Director - The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence
Gay holds doctorate degrees in ecology and psychology, and has published, taught, and lectured widely in these fields both in the U.S. and internationally. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity, and Carnivore Minds: Who These Fearsome Beings Really Are, both published by Yale University Press. She is also the author of Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell (Rocky Mountain Books, 2020). Dr. Bradshaw’s work focuses on trans-species psychology, the theory and methods for the study and care of Animal psychological well-being and multi-species cultures. Her research expertise includes the effects of violence on and trauma recovery for Elephants, Grizzly Bears, Chimpanzees, Parrots, and other species both free-living and in captivity.