Seriously, What did come first?

[Lestat]

...The chicken or the egg?

Am I correct to understand that in the beginning, organisms multiplied simply by splitting? Ok, so at some point there must've been a first "birth", right? Did this birth have to come from a mating process?

So who came first, the male or the female?

Sorry if these are silly questions. I'd like to learn more about this area of evolution (biology?). If anyone can recommend some reading (on a layman's level), I'd appreciate it.

[soon2bepro]

The problem with the chicken or egg question is that it pressuposes they're both have the same. When we talk about chickens, we're really putting a lot of different lifeforms under the same classification. One chicken is not the same as the other, just like a chicken is not the same as a duck. In both cases there's differences, though one chicken is more similar to another, than to a duck. We classify all chickens as chickens for practical purposes.

Mutation is gradual, and in the case of big animals it usually takes millions (thousands?) of years to jump from what we classify as one species to another. With your questions you're putting it all down to 1 individual lifeform. It's usually just not how it works. And even if it was, in order for anyone to be able to answer these question, they would have to have full knowledge and understanding of a lot of information that's simply way out of our reach.

This is my understading of the issue, but I reckon I'm quite ignorant in the field.

[hmkpoker]

Egg. Simple.

Whatever point in time where speciation of chickens can be said to have occurred must have involved an egg coming from a non-chicken, but the chicken did not come from a non-egg.

[soon2bepro]

The problem here is that classification of species is completely arbitrary.

[hmkpoker]

Doesn't matter. While we can't agree just which line in the geneology was the first "chicken," no matter what it must have proceeded from an egg, from a non-chicken.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]

Am I correct to understand that in the beginning, organisms multiplied simply by splitting? Ok, so at some point there must've been a first "birth", right? Did this birth have to come from a mating process?

So who came first, the male or the female?

[/ QUOTE ]

Although in some cases there can be a '1st', in most cases it's not a useful way of looking at an evolutionary process.
It's like 'which elephant first had a long trunk?'. It's arbitrary what you'll call 'long' and what you'll call 'elephant'.

luckyme

[soon2bepro]

True. Obviously whatever we classify as a chicken did come from an egg, which didn't need to come from an animal who we'd classify as a chicken. But it would most likely be a very similar animal.

In humans, only 10% of our DNA is mutation-generated.

I was just trying to point out that the drawing of the line is completely arbitrary, to the point that this first chicken might have more in common with it's parents than with nowaday's average chicken.

[Lestat]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Am I correct to understand that in the beginning, organisms multiplied simply by splitting? Ok, so at some point there must've been a first "birth", right? Did this birth have to come from a mating process?

So who came first, the male or the female?

[/ QUOTE ]

Although in some cases there can be a '1st', in most cases it's not a useful way of looking at an evolutionary process.
It's like 'which elephant first had a long trunk?'. It's arbitrary what you'll call 'long' and what you'll call 'elephant'.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. I didn't really mean "first" as in actual first. But I'm interested in how the process developed. Gradually things started giving birth. Did this happen BEFORE mating?

[Lestat]

[ QUOTE ]
Egg. Simple.

Whatever point in time where speciation of chickens can be said to have occurred must have involved an egg coming from a non-chicken, but the chicken did not come from a non-egg.

[/ QUOTE ]

So a species gave birth to a non-species? (or laid the egg of something not directly related to it?). Interesting.

[Lestat]

[ QUOTE ]
The problem with the chicken or egg question is that it pressuposes they're both have the same. When we talk about chickens, we're really putting a lot of different lifeforms under the same classification. One chicken is not the same as the other, just like a chicken is not the same as a duck. In both cases there's differences, though one chicken is more similar to another, than to a duck. We classify all chickens as chickens for practical purposes.

Mutation is gradual, and in the case of big animals it usually takes millions (thousands?) of years to jump from what we classify as one species to another. With your questions you're putting it all down to 1 individual lifeform. It's usually just not how it works. And even if it was, in order for anyone to be able to answer these question, they would have to have full knowledge and understanding of a lot of information that's simply way out of our reach.

This is my understading of the issue, but I reckon I'm quite ignorant in the field.

[/ QUOTE ]

I may have been unclear in my post. I'm not really interested in the chicken and the egg thing. I'm mainly interested in how giving birth and mating developed among all species. This must've been one of the first evolutionary designs, right? I'm curious what caused it?

[FortunaMaximus]

That's not quite knowable yet, Lestat. We haven't traced the evolutionary timelines back far enough.

Lazy method's to wiki "origin of life", and there are a few evolutionary hypotheses. (Yeah, more than one. Imagine that.)

In the middle of a few things at the moment, so this is going to be a low-content post. It's a decent article though.

[Lestat]

Thanks, I'll look it up. I just think the act of mating is pretty cool. Everything from seduction, to arousal, to the physical act of mating, to orgasm, to child birth. It seems a pretty intricate process that most every species on earth has down pat.

I'm also interested in other primal desires such as hunger. How did hunger/eating develop? I'd like to learn more about these things.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
Egg. Simple.

Whatever point in time where speciation of chickens can be said to have occurred must have involved an egg coming from a non-chicken, but the chicken did not come from a non-egg.

[/ QUOTE ]

And of course that point in time never existed, so we are back to where we started.

[FortunaMaximus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Egg. Simple.

Whatever point in time where speciation of chickens can be said to have occurred must have involved an egg coming from a non-chicken, but the chicken did not come from a non-egg.

[/ QUOTE ]

And of course that point in time never existed, so we are back to where we started.

[/ QUOTE ]

<clicks tongue> Nuh-uh. It wasn't perceived, and that's not a semantic difference, vhawk.

Lestat, I'll crunch the article and toss the short version of the theories in here after my woman goes to slumber. Few hours.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Egg. Simple.

Whatever point in time where speciation of chickens can be said to have occurred must have involved an egg coming from a non-chicken, but the chicken did not come from a non-egg.

[/ QUOTE ]

So a species gave birth to a non-species? (or laid the egg of something not directly related to it?). Interesting.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, its just that we have an incredibly hard time with continuities. We INSIST on there being a discontinous grouping of species. But its a lie, its just a model we use for practicality, and its an admittedly poor one. There never was a first chicken, there never was a first elephant. The only thing there was a first of was the first living thing...except there probably wasn't. There isn't sufficient evidence to rule out the possibility that the shift from what we would now call non-life to what we would call life was anything different than the gradual, continuous shift from one species to the next.

[soon2bepro]

ditto for any sort of change in the universe

[luckyme]

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There isn't sufficient evidence to rule out the possibility that the shift from what we would now call non-life to what we would call life was anything different than the gradual, continuous shift from one species to the next.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even now we have trouble creating clear boundaries between life and non-life. We talk about killing viruses, but they're aren't life forms in the first place. "Life" is an artifical category we create and we can move the definitions around and it'll include or exclude various entities.

luckyme

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There isn't sufficient evidence to rule out the possibility that the shift from what we would now call non-life to what we would call life was anything different than the gradual, continuous shift from one species to the next.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even now we have trouble creating clear boundaries between life and non-life. We talk about killing viruses, but they're aren't life forms in the first place. "Life" is an artifical category we create and we can move the definitions around and it'll include or exclude various entities.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree entirely. I can imagine scores of intermediates between what we consider 'obviously' non-living and 'obviously' living, to the point that the distinction becomes more obviously meaningless. The problem is that these aren't extant, or at least not numerous and 'obvious.' Viruses are a good example of something that doesnt fit in the box, but it is probably not a good example of something that 'bridges the gap.'