Which came 1st, the chicken or the egg?

Since the chicken emerges from an egg, and the egg is laid by a chicken, it is ambiguous which originally gave rise to the other. To ancient philosophers, the question about the first chicken or egg also evoked the questions of how life and the universe began. Cultural references to the chicken and egg intend to point out the futility of identifying the first case of circular cause and consequence.

Very early references to the dilemma are found in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers.

Aristotle was puzzled by the idea that there could be a first bird or egg and concluded that both the bird and egg must have always existed:

"If there has been a first man he must have been born without father or mother -- which is repugnant to nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg." The same he held good for all species, believing, with Plato, that everything before it appeared on earth had first its being in spirit."

Plutarch referred to a hen rather than simply a bird. His is Moralia in the books titled "Table Talk" discussed a series of arguments based on questions posed in a symposium. Under the section entitled, "Whether the hen or the egg came first," the discussion is introduced in such a way suggesting that the origin of the dilemma was even older:

"...the problem about the egg and the hen, which of them came first, was dragged into our talk, a difficult problem which gives investigators much trouble. And Sulla my comrade said that with a small problem, as with a tool, we were rocking loose a great and heavy one, that of the creation of the world..."

A modern analysis covering all of the major variants was authored by Christopher Langan, published in 2001 at the Mega Foundation website, and subsequently included in his book of essays, The Art of Knowing. It appeared again in The Improper Hamptonian, was included in abbreviated form in a 2001 Long Island Newsday Q&A column featuring Langan and was compactly summarized in Langan's 2001 Popular Science interview.